Coaching Conversation is goal driven, it is always focused around a specific change objective. Coaching Conversation is the backbone of the Coaching Process. It is a safe place, non judgmental, emphatic environment where the Client is encouraged to step back, get out of the “dance floor”and “get on the balcony”. “Dance floor”, using Ronald Heifetz metaphor, is where the action is. Where the friction, noise, tension, and systemic activity are occurring. Ultimately, the place where the work gets done. “Getting on the balcony” means taking a distanced view. The mental act of disengaging from the dance floor, the current swirl of activity, in order to observe and gain perspective on yourself and on the larger system. Enables you to see patterns that are not visible from the ground. (Ronald Heifetz et al.) Haneberg reminds us that “ (…) A great coach talks little, listens a lot, and facilitates the client’s thinking process. The difference between a coaching conversation and a general business conversation is the focus. A conversation can be about anything. Coaching focuses on the clients and the goals they are trying to accomplish.” (Haneberg, Lisa) Haneberg after surveying forty experienced external and internal coaches on several aspects of coaching concluded that to fulfill the purpose of coaching a Coach should:
- Improve client coachability ( increase possibilities of learning, change and transformation)
- Help the client get unstuck
- Enhance client self-awareness
- Facilitate client breakthroughs
- Uncover potential and build client skills
- Help create and implement client plans for action
According to Haneberg, each time we coach a client, one or more of these six purposes should be met. Great coaching sessions will satisfy two, three, or more purposes. (Haneberg,) Flaherty points out the three coaching tools that the coach uses in a Coaching Conversation: powerful listening, powerful asking and powerful saying. The word Powerful implies that the listening, asking and saying have a strong and helpful impact on the coachee’s awareness, learning, behavior and moving forward. What does the Coach ask his client or say to his client? Something that will allow the Client to see things with different eyes. The Coach will speak with his client so that he will be able to see something or understand something or appreciate something that he couldn’t before. But the job of a coach is beyond Client’s change of perception, it is also Client’s behavioral change. So another part of the answer is that the coach speaks in a way that frees the client to take action. Once a goal has been set and strategies discussed, the coach’s job is to help the client translate that goal into concrete action steps that get done. The endpoint of a coaching conversation is always an action step. The client sets the agenda in a coaching conversation: the coach’s job is to focus the conversation and push it to action. (Flaherty) Summing up, the Coaching Conversation aims at:
- Helping Client clear his goals and context
- Helping him to move forward and take action
- Improving Client's ability to perform and succeed
- Promoting intelligence and resources gathering
- Revealing and overcoming blind spots
- Removing blockages
- Enhancing confidence and stature
- Generating options
- Realizing potential
- Re-centering values and finding purpose
- Enhancing life and work balance
- Designing and moving towards the desired future
The concepts, purpose and process of Critical Thinking and Reflection
Let us first define the key words of the phenomena and processes being analyzed in this section: thinking; critical thinking; reflection; reflective thinking.
What is Thinking and what is Critical Thinking?
The New Oxford American Dictionary defines thinking as “(1) [noun] the process of using one’s mind to consider or reason about something; (2) [adj. or attrib.] using thought or rational judgment.” Richard Paul and Linda Elder comments on the problem of thinking: “everyone thinks; it is our nature to do so. But much of our thinking, left to itself, is biased, distorted, partial, uninformed or down-right prejudiced. Yet the quality of our life and that of what we produce, make, or build depends precisely on the quality of our thought. Shoddy thinking is costly, both in money and in quality of life. Excellence in thought, however, must be systematically cultivated.” Critical thinking, according to Richard Paul and Linda Elder, is the art of analyzing and evaluating thinking with a view to improving it. A well cultivated critical thinker:
- Raises vital questions and problems, formulating them clearly and precisely;
- Gathers and assesses relevant information, using abstract ideas to interpret it effectively;
- Comes to well-reasoned conclusions and solutions, testing them against relevant criteria and standards;
- Thinks openmindedly within alternative systems of thought, recognizing and assessing, as need be, their assumptions, implications, and practical consequences;
- And assessing, as need be, their assumptions, implications, and practical consequences;
- And communicates effectively with others in figuring out solutions to complex problems.
