Tools for Coaches

All these tools I am actively applying for my coaching engagement.

The expectations of life depend upon diligence; the mechanic that would perfect his work must first sharpen his tools. - Confucius

• Spheres of Influence: 

3 part of this tool

1. Subjects we can control
2. Subjects we can influence
3. Subjects we can’t influence, either right now or at all times

Helping them determine what is within their control, what is in their sphere of influence, and what cannot be controlled. 

Most of the time , I explain this tool to my scrum master to apply this and check if they can do anything about the situation?

• Journaling:

Having a journal can be advantageous for many diverse reasons as a coaching exercise. Daily journaling facilitates observation and can stimulate useful brainstorming about how to better strive toward the objectives. Coaches can help ensure that their clients journaling is essential by maintaining some guidance.

We as a coach also maintain a journal about our observation about a team and reflect and help the team to become better.

• The GROW model:

The GROW model is a simple method for goal setting and problem-solving in coaching. It includes for stages:

G for Goal: The goal is what the client wants to accomplish. It should be defined as clear as possible. You could combine it with the SMART method described earlier

R for Reality: That’s the status quo, where our client is right now. The client describes her current situation and how far she is away from her goal.

O for Obstacles and Options: What are the obstacles (roadblocks) that keep your client from achieving the goal? Once these obstacles are identified you can find ways to overcome them – the options.

W for Way forward: Once identified the choices need to be translated into action steps that will take your client to accomplish her goal.

• Identifying Limiting Belief:

Compose a list of all your limiting beliefs; the beliefs that stop you from moving forward. You start questioning your limiting beliefs you will start to create doubt which will lead to you changing your beliefs questions that you can ask yourself to challenge this belief.

It helps team members to come out with many assumptions which were bothering them.

• Wheel of life and how to balance it is :

All these are the below pillars of the Wheel of life

1. Health
2. Wealth
3. Happiness
4. Spiritual
5. Mental 

How balanced they are ?

As a result of this exercise, your client will have a visual map – which will look almost like a spider web. This visual map will give your client a general idea of their desired state of being in relation to their current state.

• SMART goals: 

SMART goals bring structure and accountability into goals.SMART is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. Therefore, a SMART goal incorporates all of these criteria to help focus your efforts and increase the chances of achieving that goal.

• Powerful question:

Why, What, How, When and more open-ended questions.

Powerful questions are a reflection of engaged listening and finding out the other person’s viewpoint that is established through paraphrasing. This offers a progression from listening, paraphrasing for learning, and then asking powerful questions that provide clarity or mediation of thinking.

• Personal SWOT Tool.

Help clients analyze their Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. A Personal SWOT helps clients think about careers in terms of their strengths—and identify potentially “transferable” strengths.

• Working Agreement :

A Working Agreement is a valuable tool to employ for installing a shared understanding and way of working for teams. Also called a Social Contract, this practice is an excellent foundation for building high performing teams.

In coaching engagement , it is essential we form the coaching agreement and contract with the client.

• Value discovery and Purpose identification:

Identifying your personal core values is an anchor or turning point. When there is conflict or a boundary issue, it’s possible because someone has stepped on a personal value. Once we are connected with Value and bigger purpose , we become self driven and unstoppable.

I share this tool with the scrum masters to use this tool with their team members.

• Socratic Questions:

The Socratic Questioning technique is an effective way to examine ideas in depth. It can be used at all levels and is a helpful tool for all teachers. Question related to Conceptual clarification questions, Probing assumptions, probing rationale, reasons and evidence, Questioning viewpoints and perspectives, Probe implications and consequences, Questions about the question.

• Eat the Frog :

As Mark Twain once said “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.” Eating the frog means to just do it, otherwise the frog will eat you meaning that you’ll end up procrastinating it the whole day. Take the most important item first.

A good tool improves the way you work. A great tool improves the way you think. Jeff Duntemann

• Collaborate or not?

Because no two individuals have exactly the same expectations and desires, conflict is a natural part of our interactions with others.

The Thomas Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument is designed to measure a person’s behavior in conflict situations. “Conflict situations” are those in which the concerns of two people appear to be incompatible. In such situations, we can describe an individual’s behavior along two dimensions: (1) assertiveness, the extent to which the person attempts to satisfy his own concerns, and (2) cooperativeness, the extent to which the person attempts to satisfy the other person’s concerns.These two basic dimensions of behavior define five different modes for responding to conflict situations:Competing ,Accommodating ,Avoiding ,Collaborating and Compromising 

• Force Field analysis:

Force Field Analysis was created by Kurt Lewin in the 1940s.The idea behind Force Field Analysis is that situations are maintained by an equilibrium between forces that drive change and others that resist change.For change to happen, the driving forces must be strengthened or the resisting forces weakened.The tool is useful for making decisions by analyzing the forces for and against a change, and for communicating the reasoning behind your decision.

I am sure , you are already using these tools or more. Please do share if anything more , we can use.

It is essential to have good tools, but it is also essential that the tools should be used in the right way.

Wallace D. Wattles

Are we cocooning? Why Should we?Not?

True transformation occurs only when we can look at ourselves squarely and face our attachments and inner demons, free from the buzz of commercial distraction and false social realities. We have to retreat into our own cocoons and come face-to-face with who we are. We have to turn toward our own inner darkness. For only by abandoning its attachments and facing the darkness does the caterpillar's body begin to spread out and it's light, beautiful wings begin to form.Julia Hill

Cocooning is the operation of isolating or hiding oneself from the natural social environment, which may be observed as disturbing, unfriendly, dangerous, or otherwise objectionable, at least for the present.

The caterpillar is an immature butterfly or moth, also known as the larval. A caterpillar transforms into a butterfly or moth after hibernating in a cocoon.

The term was popularized in the 1990s by marketing consultant Faith Popcorn in her book The Popcorn Report: The Future of Your Company, Your World, Your Life.

Popcorn suggested that cocooning could be broken down into three different types:

• the socialized cocoon, in which one retreats to the privacy of one's home;
• the armored cocoon, in which one establishes a barrier to protect oneself from external threats;
• the wandering cocoon, in which one travels with a technological barrier that serves to insulate one from the environment.

Cocooning is self-nurturing, which may consider distinctive to each individual and change often.

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” – Carl Jung

“Remind yourself that you cannot fail at being yourself.” – Wayne Dyer

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” – Aristotle

“The quieter you become, the more you can hear.” – Ram Dass

“The unexamined life is not worth living.” – Socrates

Occasionally, we require to calm down the inner parental expression or just subdue it completely.

Even if you are balanced and healthy, you choose to safeguard yourself from other people’s dramas and the stress of urban life.

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over again but expecting different results.” Albert Einstein

Neil Thompson, in his book People Skills, suggests that there are six steps:

• Read - around the topics you are learning about or want to learn about and develop
• Ask - others about the way they do things and why
• Watch - what is going on around you
• Feel - pay attention to your emotions, what prompts them, and how you deal with negative ones
• Talk - share your views and experiences with others in your organization
• Think - learn to value time spent thinking about your work

Here’s the Cocooning Process in an essence:

• Establish a definite time for yourself
• Establish a silent location
• De-clutter that location
• A meditation that works for you
• Examine and write down
• Listen to yourself
• Maintain A Journal
• Ask questions

Why Should we? Not?

• It’s fundamental to understand self at a deeper level.
• Self-awareness and a little soul searching are crucial to prosperity in all sections of life.
• Obliges you to figure out and see situations from a particular point of view.
• Promotes a deeper level of learning and knowing
• Build up a better insight into what’s working and what’s not. 
• Build two components to emotional intelligence: self-awareness and self-regulation. 
• Diminished anxiety and depression, calmness and increased discernment.

A couple of my companions goes 1-month cocooning treat once in six month cycle, they are developing into better as a human being. They travel to Mountain, Jungles, Deserts, Beaches, North poles wherever they can devote moment with nature but away from urban corporate clamors!

I am trying for last several years, it is a good practice and helps a lot. Many of my friends have tried it and recommended me to do so....