“The interesting thing about coaching is that you have to trouble the comfortable, and comfort the troubled.” ~ Ric Charlesworth, former Australian national women’s field hockey coach.
Top athletes get to the top of their game by investing in a coach; they know that they need expert support to achieve their best performance. It should be the same with your own career and performance at work.
For the most part of this year, many people have been focused on keeping their head above water, putting their big career goals on ice while navigating COVID-19. As you plan for 2021, perhaps it is time to invest in a coach to help you recognise and achieve your greatest potential.
To recognise your need for a coach, it is helpful to understand what ‘business coaching entails’. Coaching creates self-awareness, addresses limiting self-beliefs, and maps a path for you to push the boundaries and achieve your greatest performance.
Neshica Bheem, founder and director of Coachfluence, professional coaching, and consulting services solution provider, shares a few pointers and situations where you should seriously consider partnering up with a coach:
Career transitions: When you move to a new company, get a promotion, or your role changes at work, a re-evaluation of your personal strategy may be needed to make the transition successful. Career transitions are wonderful opportunities to reinvent yourself, to change behaviors that were not serving you, and to create opportunities for growth.
Career inertia and feeling stuck: When you find yourself in a rut or settled into a comfort zone. You know that you need to make a change, but don’t know how or where to start. When things feel stagnant, then it is definitely time to engage a coach to help you rekindle the passion for your work and define your focus in your career and life.
Desire to make an impact: Business coaches have a knack for uplifting your game and presenting a thought process that probes deeper into organisational challenges and solutions. The coaching process is very useful for managers and leaders who want to motivate their teams, to make an impact or to improve specific aspects of their leadership or management style.
Burnout and developing resilience: Burnout is a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by extreme and prolonged stress. It is described as feeling overwhelmed, emotionally drained, and the inability to meet constant demands at work or home. Burnout happens when you run yourself ragged in destructive patterns of behaviour and thought patterns. “Of course, no one wants to get to the stage of complete burnout, therefore recognising the symptoms and engaging a coach can help greatly in mitigating the signs leading up to a burnout,” advises Bheem.
Finding purpose: Doing something well in life or in the workplace is not always sufficient. We can all do things well but are they the things we are passionate about? Coaches are skilled at creating a space for deep reflection and self-awareness. This will help you to recognise your deep-held passions and will assist you in articulating your purpose.
“One should never underestimate the power of purpose as it fuels us to forge ahead, it gives us the daily motivation to create opportunities and to break boundaries,” shares Bheem.
“To maximise your coaching experience, we have developed the Coachee Toolkit to help individuals and teams on their coaching journey,” says Bheem. “It is freely available as part of a “Coach Gravity” report that we’ve developed to provide a conceptual framework for aspiring coachees to connect with and select coaches. The Coach Gravity report is the first such report in South Africa and certainly from a global perspective. This report is available at no charge on the Coachfluence website. https://www.coachfluence.com/insights/coach-selection
For more information on Coachfluence and the Gravity Report, visit www.coachfluence.co.za; email neshica@coachfluence.com or call +27 82 9262782
