Coaching with Heart
"People do not care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
This is a favorite quote from Teddy Roosevelt, one which embodies everything I believe about coaching.
Executive leadership coaches, those of us at Momentum Consulting and elsewhere, are trained in multiple effective methodologies and systems. We’ve studied the best means of working with clients to help them discover and maximize their strengths, uncover blind spots, achieve their goals and enhance their leadership skills. We assist them in building company cultures which maximize employee engagement and performance. We combine our expertise with years of experience.
We know a lot.
But all this experience and knowledge is ineffective without the underlying heart.
A truly effective coach genuinely cares for his/her clients and is invested in their success.
The core of a successful coaching relationship is a bond of mutual trust. Both coach and client need to trust one another in order to openly and honestly explore both existing and potential new emotions, thought patterns and behaviors.
Trust in confidentiality is, of course, key. But a client’s trust that the coach genuinely cares about them and their success takes the relationship to a whole new level; one in which transformative growth can occur. Active listening, empathy and compassion are every bit as important as knowledge, training and experience, and are absolutely necessary to effectively hold space for a client to solve problems and achieve their goals.
The same truth applies to your own relationships within your company, with subordinates, peers, and leaders. Believing in them and their success – and evidencing that belief – requires vulnerability. Not always easy in some corporate cultures.
FUNDAMENTAL #7: ALWAYS SERVE THE CUSTOMER Remember our founding principle, “we work in partnership” always! In all situations do what’s best for the customer, even if its to our own detriment.
