All of us coach at work and/or at home. If you want to make sure your coaching is going to make a difference, obey these rules:
- People change when something important to them is threatened: Most human beings don’t love change and need a nudge from somewhere, but not from you (which leads to #2)
- Coaching is useless when it’s thrust on them by someone else: You may want to see change in someone else’s life. It may be an employee or spouse or child. Your efforts at coaching or hiring a coach for them will be useless unless they have the burning desire to change. Until then, focus your efforts where they can have an effect – on changing yourself.
- It’s not about the coach: No coach can ‘motivate’ you – you have to motivate yourself. Putting fertilizer on a dead plant does nothing, but fertilizing a plant that is trying to grow speeds up the growth process and shows dramatic results. The first rule of coaching is that the person being coached has to want to get somewhere. Obvious and often overlooked.