Coach Mentoring

The problem a lot of people come across with mentoring is that the mentors don’t have time to mentor on top of their normal role. We’ve all been in a situation where we’re not quite sure what’s expected and our mentor isn’t available. If this is problem you face, why not try the following:

Use a silent mentor

Step 1: Identify the person you want to mentor. This could be your boss, a subordinate, a close friend, a coworker, anyone at all who has a skill that you need. This must be a person that you see frequently enough that you can do the following steps.

Step 2: Get yourself a notebook. Easy!

Step 3: Whenever you are around your mentor and you see them do something that you wish you could do, watch their behaviour and mimic it. Sometimes it’s appropriate to let them know that you’re doing it so they don’t think you’re making fun of them, other times you can quietly copy them. Notice the following:

• Posture
• Breathing
• Facial Expression
• Tone of voice
• Types of words they are using

Step 4: As carefully as you can, make a note of these in your notebook however works for you and practice doing them in front of a mirror or video camera so you can watch yourself back. Do you remind yourself of them?

Step 5: Next time you need that behaviour, remember all those little elements that make your mentor so good at it and use them. It might be that all it takes is putting a smile on your face.

This way your mentor doesn’t have to do anything extra to help you other than behave as normal. Good luck and let us know how you get on.

Our coaching programmes can now lead to ICF ACTP accreditation.

U2Coach based in Rome have joined The Performance Group so that we can ensure our European clients receive the best possible service. This also enables NLPU, ICF and Association for Coaching recognised programmes to be run acros Europe, thus providing our clients with multiple accreditations.

Thanks to the overwhelming interest in our Certificate in Supervision for Coaches and NLP Practitioners, we have decided to add a Supervision section to our book shop. If you can recommend any good books or audiovisual resources about supervision, please feel free to let us know.

Last Thursday and Friday, Allan and I attended the Association for Coaching Going global conference as exhibitors. We’d like to thank all the attendees who came for a chat at our stand and joined in with our coaching games. We had some great quotes, jokes and tips from coaches as well as some interesting chats. We gave away a free iWAM certification course to lucky winner Julia A. Choukhno.

The main eye-opener of the whole conference for me was the range of different people there. I chatted to a woman who teaches coaching techniques to young offenders, a man who runs a mentoring programme for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, a counsellor who wanted a fresh approach, a war veteran who had turned to coaching post-trauma, psychologists, doctors, professors, publishers and authors, coaches who loved psychometrics and some who hated them, NLP-ers, business coaches, life coaches, family coaches, career coaches, HR directors, coach managers, fledgling coaches and experienced ones and do you know what? All of them had a different approach to coaching. Each one of them had a different reason for getting into the profession, and each of them had a different way of dealing with clients and running their coaching sessions.

To add to the variation of backgrounds, there were several international attendees who gave us an insight into how coaching is being carried out in Russia, Portugal and the Netherlands to name but a few. For a conference with a focus on Going Global, it was lovely to see people who had come from the corners of the world to be in London for the conference.

This of course is not to mention the extraordinary local and international speakers who appeared at the conference. Although we were on the stand, Allan and I took turns dropping in to sessions and I would personally like to say what a joy it was to attend Julio Olalla’s opening speech on his life in Chile and the US and his use of coaching to spread his message that there is no joy in pushing for a “better life” when surely the best thing is to live a “good” one. He spoke at length about gratitude and morality and the personal touch that we are losing and I, for one, can say I caught a few fellow coaches wiping away a tear during an emotional story of gratitude and generosity in his own life.

Following his talk I was able to attend varied other sessions where the breadth of coaching and what it can do really came alive. It was great to meet so many people and learn so much. Thank you to the AC for putting it all together and their hard work while we were there. And thank you to the coaches who are striving for the best our profession can be, it was a real joy to meet you all.

ICF Coaching week is fast approaching (February 7 – 14) and one of our favourite tools to use is the Inventory for Work attitudes and motivations (iWAM).

The Inventory for Work Attitude and Motivation (iWAM) is an online or paper-and-pencil questionnaire which helps an organization identify an individual’s attention filters and cognitive styles, also called metaprograms.
With the iWAM, one can predict what motivates a person, their work attitude, how they prefer to communicate, and how they prefer to act in their work context. iWAM allows the organisation to take into account the individual preferences and to value each person for their strengths. Using iWAM will help an organisation make better use of the human potential of its workforce.

We are the only company in the UK who are licensed to train people to use iWAM and we would like to announce a unique offer: for those who book an iWAM course during coaching week (February 7-14) we are happy to offer it half-price!

Our next iWAM courses are running from 12-14 of May 2010 and 8-10 December 2010. So contact us to come and join this exciting course.

Give us a call on 01225 867285, an e-mail: enquiries@theperformancesolution.com, or a tweet @TPSCoaching to find out more.

ICF portfolio Coach Mentoring.

We are providing our first 15 clients with mentoring for their ACC and PCC credentials. Call 01225 867285 to join them and book your telephone, face to face or learning set mentoring support and join a global community of professional coaches.

ICF portfolio Coach Mentoring.

We are providing our first 15 clients with mentoring for their ACC and PCC credentials. Call 01225 867285 to join them and book your telephone, face to face or learning set mentoring support and join a global community of professional coaches.

Our coaching programmes can now lead to ICF ACTP accreditation.

U2Coach based in Rome have joined The Performance Group so that we can ensure our European clients receive the best possible service. This also enables NLPU, ICF and Association for Coaching recognised programmes to be run acros Europe, thus providing our clients with multiple accreditations.