The Value of Being Called to Coach

January 28, 2020

Everyone has life purpose they continuously seek out in their life time. For some, it may be fame. For others, it may be wealth. Whatever your heart desires, you long for the “true happiness” that invigorates your soul and fuels your desire to not just live this lifetime, but also create that ripple of kindness that brings about happiness to others too. It would have been all wonderful this concept of happiness was so easy to achieve. Unfortunately, happiness comes at a very expensive price – most often than not at the expense of something equally important to you.

Luckily, we have discovered Clifton StrengthsFinder – a revolutionary tool to help us focus on our innate, dominant talent themes that allow us to capitalize on what we are naturally talented at, and focus our grit towards these significant themes to drive even greater results in the things that we do. These themes are further amplified by Strengths Coaches who help you understand what your dominant talent themes mean, what they represent you as, and how you can further make use of these natural talents to drive not only good results, but also excellent, purposive, impactful lives as you engage with your Strengths Coach.

Today, I had the most unexpected, turnaround story with my participation with the First Coaching Bootcamp here in the Philippines. Gallup has sponsored the Strengths Philippines Community with a support that amplifies the coachee’s ability to find a Strengths Coach. With just an initial intention to observe how the Strengths Coach conduct their coaching sessions, I had the pleasure of having been trusted with a coachee during the Bootcamp. This jumpstart opportunity made me step-up to the challenge of putting into action what we have learned in the last four and a half days of the Accelerated Strengths Coaching Course.

It was even more fulfilling to see seasoned coaches during the debriefing session share their own insights on how they have gained new insights on their coaching challenges. Coaches Val, Vinna, Lillibeth, and the rest of the group resonated with me on their difficulties in coaching, how they used their dominant talent themes to step-up to the challenge and what techniques they would have used to manage the coaching conversation and drive coaching performance.

Thanks to Bell, Danny, Pia, Saurav, Deon and the rest of the Strengths Coaches Philippines Community, my main takeaways from this week’s experience are:

1. You are your own captain of the ship. Take action on the opportunity with confidence when you are presented with one. (Activator)

2. Keep calm and use the tools to your advantage. You are the best tool in the entire coaching conversation that your coachee will ever need. (Strategic)

3. Understand the connections that link your life and that of your Coachee’s. These drives the most powerful coaching conversations that you can ever establish. (Connectedness)

4. Capitalize on the trust that you can establish with your Coachee by being transparent, genuine and “in the moment” when doing coaching conversations. (Relator)

5. Be familiar with the available resources around you, and make good use of these tools as you drive better and more meaningful coaching conversations not only for your Coachee, but also for you as the Coach. (Arranger)