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10 Myths about coaching - the first 5!

Here are five of the common myths about coaching in organisations that have grown up around this process over the last 15 years.

 You need to be an expert - you must you know all the answers. As the coach no you don't. Your job is to help the coachee arrive at the best answer for themselves and for them to feel confident to put it into action.

 You need to have a formal coaching qualification, to be an effective coach. No you don't. Success as a coach comes from the use of key interpersonal skills such as establishing empathy and rapport, asking the right questions, listening carefully to the answers and coaching and guiding the coachee towards finding their right answers and approach and enacting them.
You may learn these skills from a variety of inputs of which a formal coaching qualification could be just one.
 You cannot coach peers from the same team and their boss as well. Yes you can but it is a complex process to handle and you need to be particularly aware and careful about confidentiality. If you get this right then all parties involved can get a richer insight and good coaching outcomes

 You can you coach someone in their office or on the telephone. Yes you can do either of these things but it is not ideal. Coaching someone in their Office or normal place of work produces the risk that they are more likely to be disturbed or distracted by others around them - not necessarily physically but even from a mental point of view and lack of focus on their coaching issues.
Telephone coachimg has its time and place but given that body language transitts about 70% of the meaning in conversations then face to face conversations are usually much more powerful and effective.
 You cannot coach someone and take notes at the same time. Yes you can and it is a bit of an art that you can learn. The key point is for it not to get in the way of the conversation and relationship between you and the coachee. It is helpful to the coachee for the coach to take note of the key issues, options and actions that the coachee is describing and to send them back to them shortly after each coaching session. It is better that the coachee does this rather than the coachee having to worry about them and for it to interrupt their ability to talk freely. If this note taking gets in the way of the discussion then the coach should stop it and produce them later on.