In the Russian language there is no analogue of the word "coach", but if you know what it is about, the representatives of this profession can be called trainers-psychologists, individual mentors. Also in Russia there are no state educational institutions where they teach the art of coaching, so those who want to practice it have to study in related specialties and graduate from special courses.
Who is a coach
A coach is a specialist who knows psychology well and is able to motivate the client during a conversation, not controlling him, not giving ready-made solutions, but pushing him to find better ways in life. The main tasks of a coach are to inspire, teach a person to think independently, and not accept ready-made options, help to find an individual way to solve each problem, change the client's attitudes and adjust his behavior models, taking into account his individual characteristics. After a high-quality, professionally conducted coaching session, the client feels easy and free, he sees decisions that he did not notice before, he begins to understand how to improve his life, and changes the very essence of his attitudes and worldview. Of course, such classes are conducted strictly individually.
The main skills of a coach are choosing the right questions, the ability to not give any judgments and devalue the client's words. In a conversation, the coach does not direct the interlocutor, does not impose his solutions to the problem on him, and does not even evaluate his actions and words in any way. All he does is ask questions. His task is to push the client to find the right solution, give him the opportunity to see what he did not notice before, and also develop his own individual path and a number of additional options for solving the problem. Those. he does not control, does not comfort, does not irritate, does not seek to provoke an emotional reaction, like a psychologist, but only pushes.
How coaches communicate with clients
The main difficulty in the profession of a coach is that he has to give up the completely natural human habit of giving judgments. When a client talks about some of his mistakes that led to bad consequences, the specialist cannot say: "You did the wrong thing" or "Your mistake can still be corrected, so you should not worry." His task is to gently nudge the client to find a solution, so the coach will ask you: “What is valuable to you in what you told about?”.
During a conversation with a person, a professional should build a chain of questions that will help him gently, without irritating the interlocutor, help him find a way out of this situation. He asks the questions: "What do you see valuable in this?", "What gives this experience?", "What did it teach you?", "How to fix it?", "How can it help you?" A person, answering them, analyzes the situation and himself finds a way to solve difficulties that is ideal for him. If the client is in the wrong conversation, the coach will gently help him return to the main topic and understand where the problem lies.
