Year End Goal Setting Self Coaching Questions

It's the time of the year again where people reflect on what they have achieved the rest of the year. Some reactions include regret (Why didn't I do it?), satisfaction (Thank God I quit that job!), shock (What? Year end already?) and ignorance (I don't need goals to be successful!).

To make personal and professional changes and move one step closer to having your dreams fulfilled, personal reflection is needed. It's like driving a car and looking at the rear view mirror to make sure all is safe and we are on the right track.

One of the most powerful tools to do the above is Self Coaching. Coaching is basically asking powerful questions that make people reflect on their problems or issues and come up with their own solutions. It creates empowerment. Coaching can be done one to one, group or on self.

Below are some powerful coaching questions that can be asked for self reflection (for goal setting);

1. What is the purpose of my life?
2. What makes me happy and fulfilled?
3. What are my strength?
4. How can I use my strength and achieve fulfillment?
5. What are my weaknesses?
6. How will my weaknesses prevent me from achieving my goals?
7. What can I do to control or manage my weaknesses?
8. What do I want to achieve next year?
9. How will I achieve my new year goals?
10. What possible barriers that prevent me from achieving my goals?
11. What can I do to remove or manage the barriers?
12. Who do I need to bring to achieve my goals?
13. How do I measure my progress in term of my new year goals?
14. What makes the goals important to me?
15. What have I achieved so far in my life? this year?
16. Am I happy with my progress? 
17. How can I make myself happier?
18. What kind of system do I need to put in place to help me achieve my goals?
19. How will I reward myself once I achieve my goals?
20. What changes do I need to make to get closer to my goals?

All the best in your year end reflection and may you achieve your goals in 2015.        

Asking Coaching Questions Using GROW Model

As mentioned in the previous article, coaching is one of the tools that leaders can use to improve productivity, increase performance and boost morale. One of the most popular coaching model used by many coaches around the world is the GROW  model.

In this conversation model, a coach asks questions that explore the coachee's Goal, Reality of current situation, Options for improvement and Will to do them.

Let us look at some of the questions that a coach can ask using this GROW  model;

Goal questions

1. What do you want to achieve in life?
2. What is your career goal?
3. What do you want to achieve x years from now?
4. Where do you see yourself 3 years from now in this organization?
5. Which area in your job that you want to improve?
6. What do you want to discuss in our coaching session today?

Reality questions

1. Where are you now relative to your career goal?
2. What aspects of your job that give you the greatest pleasure?
3. Which areas in your job that you want to improve?
4. What makes you happy and fulfilled?
5. What have you achieved so far in your career? life? finance? etc

Options questions

1. What are you planning to do to achieve your goals?
2. What actions will you take to improve yourself?
3. What kind of support do you need to move you closer to your goals?
4. When are you planning to implement your plan?
5. How do you measure your success in moving towards your goals?
6. What new skills, knowledge or attitude that you need to have to move you closer to your goals?

Will questions

1. On a scale of 1 to 10, how motivated are you to achieve your goals?
2. What are the possible challenges that you will face to move towards your goals?
3. How will you overcome the challenges? What is your plan?
4. On an emotional level, what emotions can prevent you from achieving your goals? How will you manage them?
5. How will you motivate your self to stay focus on your goals?
6. How will you reward your self when you achieve the milestones in moving toward your goals?

These are some possible questions that can be asked when coaching using this model. You can create your own questions to be asked as well. Don't limit yourself to the ones above. 

Even though the model provides a step by step guide, in real coaching session, things will not go as smoothly as in the model. A good coach knows when to move forward with the questions or stay on the questions until the coachee is clear with what he wants or when to backtrack and go to the previous steps. The key is to stay flexible and sensitive to the need of the coachee.

Try the questions in your coaching session today and you will see the results in your coachee. 

Coaching Using GROW Model

In the previous 2 articles, we discussed about the meaning of coaching and characteristics of a good coach and coachee. Once we understand the meaning of coaching and selected our coach and coachee, now comes the most critical part.

Coaching is using the Socratic method of 'teaching'. I used the term 'teaching' in a loose manner. In coaching, the coach 'teaches' (or guides) his coachee by making him reflect on his current situation, his goals and ways to get there by asking questions. 

This is powerful in empowering the coachee because it makes him reflect and comes up with his own solutions. Nobody understands his own problem other than himself. As such, by asking powerful questions, a coach guides his coachee to find the solutions. The coach acts as a mirror where the coachee reflects on himself.

The most common model used in coaching is the 4-step questioning technique known as GROW. Below are the details of each steps;

1. Goal - The first step is to determine the goal, short term and long term, of the coaching session. This is important as it determines the final outcome to be achieved by the coaching session. It sets the 'mood', approach and time frame of the session.

2. Reality - In this step, the coach asks questions to enable coachee to determine his current situation in perspective of his goals in step 1. Some common issues explored include present performance, challenges, motives and others.

3. Options - Next, after determining goal and current situation, coach explores, with coachee the possible solutions to achive the pre-determined goals. Possible obstacles, resources, emotional response, action plans, etc are explored.

4. Will and Wrap Up - Lastly, detailed plan is formulated and the coach asks questions to explore commitment, time frame, support structure, etc to ensure the plan is actionable. Here, both coach and coachee will agree on the next meeting to discuss progress.

In our next article, we will discuss questions to be asked at each step of the GROW Model.        

Improving Performance Through Coaching (Part 2)

As we have discussed earlier, coaching is one of performance improvement tools that leaders can use to make positive changes in the workplace. However, not everybody can be can be a coach or coachee. As the coaching process involves long term commitment, patience and good interpersonal skills, selection of coach and coachee needs to be done carefully. 

Generally, characteristics of good and effective coach include;

1. Possess good communication skills especially listening and asking great questions.
2. Formally trained and well verse in the coaching principles and processes.
3. Patient and committed.
4. Believe in human potentials.
5. Strive on challenges.
6. Flexible but firm.
7. Able to feel empathy without personally attached to it.
8. Withhold judgments.
9. Not imposing his values, beliefs and knowledge on coachee.
10. Able to think on his feet and adapt.   

To select a coachee, we need to consider characteristics such as;

1. Committed in term of time and other resources.
2. Doer of planned actions.
3. Willingness to change and improve.
4. Curious.
5. Positive learning attitude.
6. Good listener
7. Humble.
8. Having an open mind.
9. Willing to share personal experiences.
10. Accepting own strength and weaknesses.

In the next article, we will discuss the step by step process of coaching.

Improving Performance Through Coaching (Part 1)

John C. Maxwell, an international expert in leadership once said that all successful people had others helping them along the way. I am sure you can recall your teachers, friends, colleagues and even parents that have supported you to become where you are now in life.

One of the best way to build others is through coaching. What is coaching? Coaching is a process used to guide others to achieve their objectives or goals in life and work. It is basically a performance improvement 'tool' to enhance productivity, increase motivation and improve job or life performance. 

The origin of coaching came from the sports world where a coach guide his 'coachee' to achive certain targets or performance benchmark. The idea was picked up by management about 3 decades ago. It has been proven to improve individual's performance. Many organizations nowadays include coaching as an important tool to grow new leaders, improve productivity and many others.

Coaching can be done in a 1 to 1 situation or in groups. It can be done formally or informally. In the next article, we will discuss what makes a good coach and coachee.  

Stories That Change Lives

We all love stories. They make us cry, laugh and reflect. Stories are powerful tools that can be used to teach life-changing lessons. Look at the great religious leaders of our time. All of them used stories to transfer key lessons and teachings.

Life-changing stories have certain structures that make them easy to follow, understand and remember. The next time you want to use stories to impart lessons to your team members, remember the acronym SEAL.

Short (in time and characters). Entertaining stories are short for obvious reasons as mentioned above. How short is a story? Personally, I prefer them not to exceed 5 minutes. We also need to limit the characters in the stories to not more than three. Why? If it is more than three, we will find it hard to tell the stories and worst still, our audience find it hard to understand.

Entertaining. Our stories need to be entertaining. How to achieve this? Tell them with passion and enthusiasm. Use dialogues to bring the characters to life. Tell of the struggles and how your heroes (or heroines) overcome them. Use your body language and vocal varieties to give your stories more impact.

Audience-appropriate. Avoid stories that may offend people. Sexist, racist and stories that ridicule certain segments of societies need to be avoided at all costs. Study and get to know your audience before you decide which story to tell them.

Learning-oriented. Good stories have learning points. Before ending your stories, make your audience reflect on them by mentioning key learning points. I love to ask my audience what their thoughts or lessons that they can learn after I tell my stories. This will make them reflect and when they reflect, change happens.
So the next time you want to tell stories to your teams, use the acronym SEAL above to ensure your stories have all the elements they need to inspire change.  

Trust Busters

It is always easy to destroy than to build. The same goes for trust. It takes years to build and seconds to loose. In our interpersonal relations with others, many at times we ignore the little things that can break that fragile trust we have with our colleagues.

Below are some of the trust busters habits that we need to be aware in our daily interactions with our colleagues and loved ones;

1. Failure to keep promises
2. Showing incompetence
3. Lack of respect towards others
4. Not listening enough
5. Untidy and poor hygiene
6. Not respecting time
7. Over promise
8. Withholding information
9. Talking bad about others
10. Cutting people in the middle of their sentence

I am sure you can list some other trust busting habits that you observe in the workplace or home. The idea here is to be aware of them and take some kind of action to manage or control the habits. Trust is important in teamwork environment. If we are not aware of these habits, we may end up destroying the one thing that makes our team effective.

Tips For Effective Mentoring (Part 2)

Not all can be good mentors. Reasons for poor mentoring program sometimes lies partly because wrong people are chosen to mentor others.

What are the characteristics of good mentors? Below are some of them that we can use when we choose who to mentor others.

1. Has the right experience.
2. Willing and able to mentor.
3. Committed to help others.
4. Possess good listening skills.
5. Comfortable with people.
6. Able to ask great questions.
7. Willing to work the extra mile to serve others.
8. Believe in the potential of others.
9. Patient and kind.
10. Has basic mentoring skills.

The list above is not complete. When we choose a mentor, we need to remind ourselves that in the eyes of their mentees, mentors are leaders. Are we choosing the right person to lead others?

Tips for Effective Mentoring (Part 1)

Mentoring is a powerful tool to increase productivity and performance in the workplace. What is mentoring? It is a deliberate process to improve job performance through consultation and sharing of experience.

Normally it is done on a 1 to 1 basis between a mentor (the one providing the guidance) and a mentee. However, group or team mentoring are also popular in many organizations.

In order for mentoring to be effective, there are several issues to consider;

• Top management commitment (manpower, time, money, etc)
• Able and willing mentors
• Able and willing mentees
• Clear mentoring purpose and objectives
• Mentoring training for mentors
• Reward systems for mentors and mentees
• Support structure for both mentors and mentees
• Communication systems to encourage mentoring culture

In the next article, we will discuss characteristics of an effective mentors.  

    

Swiss Cheese Method for Lasting Change.

When it comes to change, one of the greatest challenges is to maintain the momentum of change. Often after a while, most planned change die a natural death due to lack of commitment, poor follow up and haphazard implementation.

As now is almost the end of 2013, let us look back at some of our goals that we want to achieve this year. Are we anyway getting near to them let alone achieving them? A good example to observe is the parking space available at health clubs or gyms. Normally, it is difficult to find a parking space a few weeks in January. However, the opposite is true from February onward. We can park anywhere we want. This is a good example of starting with a bang and later on die in silent.

What is the secret to lasting change? Maybe the 'Swiss cheese' approach can offer us the solution. I used this method years ago to make a lasting change ie inculcate the habit of reading which is very important in my line of work.

The method is simple. Like the small holes in Swiss cheese, what we do is to perform a small portion of a particular task or allocate a short period of time to do something that we want to make permanent in our life.

In my case, I allocate 20 minutes (at first) everyday (other than weekend) to do my reading. After a few weeks, this 20-minute reading task  became a routine like eating and taking a bath that I feel 'incomplete' without performing it. Slowly but surely, it became my habit until this day.

So, what is the habit or change that you want to implement in 2014? Regular workout in a gym? Helping your kids with their homework? Or maybe be becoming a regular reader? Use the Swiss cheese method to built your new habit to make that lasting change. I assure you that in Dec 2014, you will look back and feel thankful that you make small but consistent change that lasts.        

Initiating and Maintaining Change

I am sure that many of us are familiar with the phrase “Change or perish”. Initiating and maintaining change is hard work. Without proper techniques, most often, the consequences of change is failure.  

Chip and Dan Heath in their bestselling book “Switch” outlined several steps to initiate and maintain change in our personal and professional life.

Follow the Bright Spots – Research and investigate what’s working in the industry or other people and clone it.

Script the Critical Moves - Make the change small and specific. Describe in detail the behaviour that needs to be changed. Make is as vivid as possible.

Point to the Destination - What is the final outcome of the change process? Is it increased output? Cleaner and more orderly work space? Reduced accidents?

Find the Feeling – Make people feel something about the change process. If it’s to reduce wastage, show them the statistics. Pile up that one-side-printed paper on the table. Personalize the stories of the previous accidents victims. Show them the horrible accidents scene and say. “This could happen to all of us”.

Shrink the Change – Break down the change into smaller steps. Set smaller objectives along the way. Allocate each task to an individual or team and monitor accordingly.

Grow Our People - Cultivate a sense of identity and instill the growth mindset in the new environment. Put up posters, highlight the new identity in meetings, briefings and during coffee talk.