Today I attended the Coaching for Brilliance workshop conducted by my friends at Brilliance, Inc. The event was hosted at a Cisco facility (thanks Cisco, and... hey, nice lunchrooms!!).
Heather and Denise facilitate a great session that covers all the bases in one day.
It goes without saying that the best part of the class are the 'live' coaching sessions - but I'll say it anyway.
The problem is, one day of coaching isn't enough. This isn't an issue with the course or design - hell, one month of coaching wouldn't necessarily be enough.
It brought to mind a question I've had many times. If there's a ToastMasters, where people can practice giving speeches in a 'safe' environment, why isn't there a CoachMasters that does the same?
The three best ways to learn coaching are:
- Coach... a lot - using any method of your choice (but have a method or framework) - and get informed feedback on your performance.
- Get coached - feel what effective and ineffective coaching feels and looks like.
- Observe coaching - watch coaches coach, and break down what worked and didn't work.
You can attend a hundred classes. You can read a thousand books. But if you don't do these three things, you won't reach coaching competence (let alone greatness).
It turns out it's easy to do these three things. Just get three coaches together and coach in triads - one coach, one coachee, one observer. Coach one round, give feedback, and rotate. You can do three twenty minute cycles in an hour.
NFL players practice game scenarios over and over, so that they're ready when it's showtime. We do the same thing for important presentations (ummm... you do practice before a presentation, right?), so you should also do it for coaching.
There's my advice... start a CoachMasters at your workplace...
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