Coaching in organizational settings is a powerful tool to develop skills across a wide range of professional fields, it serves to increase confidence, work performance and also to build better communication skills.
Coaching also provides a space for personal development. Traditional approaches to personal development are often focused on training, but coaching and its innate interactive characteristics make it the best tool to build confidence and learn skills as it encourages a change in the learners internal thought processes.
One of the most natural ways to introduce coaching to any kind of environment is peer coaching. Peer coaching is a confidential process where two people, who are at a similar level, support each other to work through challenges they are facing. The feeling of familiarity of sharing with one of your peers makes the experience more straightforward and connected.
Coaching and learning how to do it is an essential tool for meaningful and productive working.
A peer coach should be able to listen without judgement, reflect on what they are hearing, ask the right questions and support their peer to decide what’s the best thing to do.
Often times coaching can be confused with advising, but it differs from it as a coach does not push the coachee towards a direction or explicitly tell them what to do. Someone advising might give direct opinions, or would map scenarios to try to persuade a coachee to take a particular direction.
A good coaching session provides the coachee with new insights and helps them reflect on the issue from a different perspective, this is achieved by having a coach who actively listens, but most importantly that asks the right questions. The best way to achieve this, is by following a structured and clear pathway, and learning and practicing with each other.
To fully understand peer to peer coaching, you have to be willing not only to coach someone else, but to be the coachee, as well.
By agreeing to to be coached, you’re already sharpening your skills to be able to reciprocate, the same kind of insight. Giving attention to your peer creates an effective bond between peers which allows for more dedicated sessions. How to know what questions to ask?
According to articles published by the Institute of Coaching, there are certain steps you can follow to improve your coaching skills, they are the following:
1. Each session should begin by deciding and specifying the topic that you are trying to develop. In other words to assess the situation, what is the state of the issue or problem that the coaching session is trying to solve. As redundant as it might seem, it is vital not to try to solve other problems.
Traditionally, these sessions take place in a physical space, in which the coach and the coachee are in front of each other, but now with the use of technology, you can have coaching and mentoring sessions online.
After clearly establishing the issue, it’s important to assess correctly what is it that you are trying to achieve, and most importantly how and which strategy will be used.
2. After that, it’s important to establish what are some of the challenges that you might encounter. Try to sort out what are some of the hurdles that will need to be overcome, and allow time and space to think about it.
3. The final step encourages to think of a concrete small action that will help get a step further. Change is not something that happens overnight, but rather a sum of small changes.
If you follow these steps and recommendations you can easily become an expert coach or mentor, remember that you can become better at it if you’re continuously practicing.
Coaching doesn’t necessarily have to happen in a face-to-face context. Increasingly, teams are meeting and working online, people working from all corners of the world come together to work in a non-physical environment. Working in these types of environments poses different kinds of challenges, including some that might be fixed through coaching sessions.
Thanks to new apps and new technological developments, its possible to have asynchronous coaching sessions, there is no need to be in the same time-zone or to meet in odd hours for the coach or coachee.
In Gamoteca we have created a game which allows you to have a coaching and mentoring session online, follow these useful tips to have an effective session and to build a bond with your peers. Play as many times as you want and become a great coach.