Coaching Model: W.I.S.D.O.M.

A Coaching Model Created by Ovidiu Mihai
(Business Coach, ROMANIA)

Wisdom is the ability to think and act using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense, and insight. Wisdom is associated with attributes such as unbiased judgment, compassion, experiential self-knowledge, transcendence and non-attachment, and virtues such as ethics and benevolence.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, wisdom is the capacity of judging rightly in matters relating to life and conduct; soundness of judgment in the choice of means and ends; opposed to folly.

My coaching model is applied in the context of a transformation process, helping individuals to rediscover themselves, and to use their genuine findings, to design the next steps to their goal achievement. WISDOM represents acronyms from the main ingredients necessary for the coaching process.

“Wise”.

Every one of us is equipped with a mix of experiences, knowledge, learning from difficult situations, and a complex set of competencies that can be used as tools for futures objectives. It is the inside-out approach, in relation to the external environment, with social, educational, and cultural influences.

In the coaching process, this stage is one of self-discovery, where the client is invited to acknowledge what are their strengths and weaknesses, what are the key success factors in their personal and professional environment. In this context, we highlight how wise it is really defined for this person and start to link all this with the desired objectives.

“Inner”.

Deep dive into the inside ‘core system’. Many times we evaluate our daily context at the surface level, taking into consideration superficial signals and biases decisions. In this stage of the process, we work at the deeper level of the client, finding the core values and principles that guide him forward.

Many beliefs could pop-up now, creating awareness about the unexploited potential and the real blockers from the context. It is the sensitive part of the coaching journey, where the relationship between thoughts, behaviors, and feelings will positively influence the entire mood, empowering the intuition to serve the right path to the goal accomplishment.

“Solution”.

Keeping the ‘move forward’ approach and having the objective in mind, we start to work towards the solution. Powerful questioning is going to bring the challenge to the ordinary perception of the context, facilitating the perspective reframing and spotting new opportunities to be taken into consideration. It is the moment to refresh the approach and define a new way of doing things, using many special tools like Visualization or Mindfulness, in a very creative and dynamic way.

The real challenge is to understand the ‘missing puzzle’, to wear the right glasses to understand correctly the reality, to learn new things about the situation and at the same time about the person himself and at last but not least, to produce the big ‘shift’ that will unleash the energy and the right attitude to accomplish the target.

“Design”.

Any good solution needs an efficient implementation plan. With the proper guidance, the client establishes his personal plan, creating clear actions to be taken for the short and the long term. The secret ingredient of this stage is the commitment, which is the result of all previous steps of the process. Together with the coach, the client designs the optimal framework meant to keep him accountable outside of the coaching session.

“Ovidiu Mihai”.

Yes, these are my initials. In fact, they stand for my role in this journey, it’s about me as a facilitator towards one’s self-discovery and it’s also me as a professional companion in the coaching process. Considering that I am defined by a unique set of experiences and learnings, principles and values, social and professional behavior, competences, and personal purposes, all those genuine characteristics are reflected in my coaching model. In my professional life I played many different roles, in Sales, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Technology and successfully fulfilled several key leadership responsibilities. All these experiences have shaped me and so I have gained a good understanding of change and become adaptable to it. I have also learned about the right way to listen to the person in front of me and to positively challenge that person by asking the right questions which are meant to uncover the path to the next goal.