The art of coaching requires a combination of skills. Noteworthy, there are still many essential consequences as much as benefits that every coach faces when utilizing their different coaching skills. Coaching skills have both strengths and challenges that can either refer to the environment, individual and finally the task of coaching. The key challenge is how the coaches integrate the wide amount of skills they possess into their competition and training programs.
Relationship
One important coaching skill is the ability to foster a healthy and productive relationship among the team members. Coaches should be able to build effective relationships among the team members and the team management, including building rapport and showing empathy to the team members. Coaches should have an independent perspective in the context, jargon and performance of their coaches and are familiar and have existing credibility and relationship with their team members. Coaches are presented with a progressive chance to observe their team members, challenge, motivate and develop them, as well as provide feedback on a progressive basis (Rogers 2012). A good relationship between the coach and the team members is a vital element of success in coaching (Zeus & Skiffington 2000).
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A strong relationship enhances success prospects. However, some difficulties can disrupt the good relationship between the coach and their team members. Team members might be strongly attached to their previous coach thus making a hostile environment for the new coach from the onset. Besides, internal disagreements among individual team members might influence the members to create camps among themselves thus making it challenging to coerce the team.
Listening
Authentic listening is a major skill expected in coaching (Rogers 2012) and is likely to boost the relationship between the team members, the management, and the coach. According to Rogers (2012), listening fosters authenticity and trust. Listening is the best part of coaching for many coaches since it shows that their ideas are being valued and heard at a greater level. Although coaches are trained in the skills of active listening and body language, some of these training have strayed from the central conception of active listening. According to Cox and Jackson (2010), listening has been transformed into a technique that disenchants team members by offering a platform that placates individuals into understanding that they have been heard. Even worse, co-opted listening can sometimes act as a manipulation tool to the speaker instead of a pathway that can lead the listener into the world of the other. Noteworthy, failure to listen lead to a discussion where participants become defensive and reduce their learning potential.
Goal-setting
Most theories on coaching focus on goal setting (Rogers 2012). It fits well with the coaching role of setting clear expectations to the team members, managers and other stakeholders (Cox & Jackson 2010). The intrinsic drivers of coaches must be aligned with their professional and personal goals in order to achieve their targets (Zeus & Skiffington 2000). Besides, the goals set by coaches must fit with the inherent values and needs of their team members. However, the challenge presented by this skill is that sometimes, goals allow external coaches to limit conversations to issues that are accepted by the organization that has employed the coaching staff, and that internal coaches are furthermore controlled by the organization in charge (Cox & Jackson 2010). The coach can, however, help the organization to get clarity regarding their aspirations, motivation and commitment for change. Besides, the coach can also use his coaching skills to assist team members in understanding how their individual goals align with the goals of the organization, visualize and get committed to the goals, generate options to attain the goal and provide feedback on the progress towards attaining the goals.
Power
The skill of power in coaching cannot be ignored. After all, coaches have a lot of influence on the team members’ recognition, remuneration and development opportunities (Rogers 2012). Coaching usually begins with the assumption of equality. However, Zeus and Skiffington (2000) challenges this assumption by stating that power must always be present in any coaching relationship. Just like in any managerial capability, coaches should have power and authority over the team members in order to create an effective command chain among the team. However, the main challenge with power is that in the effort to facilitate power, coaches might end up doing something that is not them, for instance, end up dictating the members instead of leading them (Cox & Jackson 2010).
Confidentiality
Another skill of the coaching manager is confidentiality. In an official coaching conversation between the coach and players, individuals may reveal to their line managers more than they would in regular conversations. This is as a result of the coach's ability to ask powerful questions, enhanced listening skills and ability to create a conducive relationship for the trainers to think out loud. Such openness fosters a powerful individual relationship between the coach and members, consequently leading to excellent performance and success of the team in general (Rogers 2012). The assumption of a safe place to voice out concerns implies that everything that is shared to the coach cannot be used against the team members (Cox & Jackson 2010). Although confidentiality is crucial to coaching success, it is unrealistic to expect the same confidentiality levels in formal coaching relationship (Zeus & Skiffington 2000). The challenge about confidentiality is that it might be difficult for coaches to guarantee total confidentiality levels especially when the information shared might be affecting the overall success of the team or need the involvement of another party in the organization (Zeus & Skiffington 2000).
Conclusion
Every coach needs to possess specific coaching skills in order to lead a team successfully. Given the increasingly common expectations that coaches face, it is vital to train coaches on how to handle different challenges that might interfere with their skills and how to strengthen the skills that they already possess.
References
Cox, E., & Jackson, P. (2010). Developmental coaching. The complete handbook of coaching , 217-230.
Rogers, J. (2012). Coaching skills: A handbook: A handbook . McGraw-Hill Education (UK).
Zeus, P., & Skiffington, S. (2000). The complete guide to coaching at work . McGraw Hill Professional.
