A Coach as Your Mentor by Riley Cardwell How many of us at one time or another have said, "If I had known then what I know now, things would have turned out differently? How many of us recognize how beneficial it would have been to have had someone helping us along our professional path and pointing out the bumps in the road?
Mentoring is an age-old concept. Today more and more people are appreciating the value of using a coach as a mentor. Hiring a coach as your mentor is often the first step in an exciting growth process.
When a coaching relationship begins, the coach, acting as a mentor, helps you to clarify your visions, goals, and ideas. The coach then invites you to agree to be challenged and supported.
Coaching people to be more effective continues by helping those being coached to identify their strengths and utilize those strengths to take effective action. Each one of us was born to do something unique and special. If we can find an arena that fits our value system and a job where we can utilize our skills, our level of effectiveness will be greatly enhanced.
How do we recognize a coach who is capable of acting as a strong mentor? A good coach continually asks penetrating questions: "What unintended results are you getting?" "How are you contributing to them?" "Where are you stuck in an old pattern?""How could you look at the problem or solution differently?" But the most important question a coach can ask is, "What is missing that could make a difference?"
To judge the effectiveness of a coach who is acting as your mentor, ask yourself how you feel after having a conversation with him or her. After speaking with your coach, you should feel empowered and enabled. You should feel more clear, more passionate, more powerful, and more inspired to take action. Most important, you should feel more capable of doing whatever it is you have to do.
AFTER SPEAKING WITH YOUR COACH, YOU SHOULD FEEL MORE CLEAR, MORE PASSIONATE, MORE POWERFUL, AND MORE INSPIRED TO TAKE ACTION.
We each have the inherent creativity, intelligence, and tacit knowledge required to succeed, but many of us need help gaining access to them. An empowering coach acting as a mentor can always find the key to unlock our hidden talents and skills.
Coaches don't have all the answers, but they do have the questions that elicit from you the answers that you are suppressing. Good coaches help their clients to think more clearly, to work through unresolved issues, and to discover the solutions that are buried inside.
RILEY CARDWELL COACHING 249 S. Pacific Coast Highway # 202 Solana Beach, CA 92075 Phone (619) 515-4884 Fax (760) 632-1152
Copyright ©2003 Riley Cardwell Coaching. All Rights Reserved.
Site developed and hosted by Bill Holmes Consulting