Introduction to Coaching

By Elizabeth Cole

What do you think of when you hear the word coach? While your mind may have wandered to your little league experience in elementary school or your favorite sports team, coaches are not just for athletes! Volunteers are likely to encounter many situations where personal coaching would make a big difference in their performance, whether it’s improving communication, resolving conflict, or making better decisions.
Supervisors who apply a coaching model ask open-ended questions, helping volunteers to discover answers and solutions on their own. In this way, coaching respects individual capabilities and encourages self-development and personal confidence. It leads to greater reflection, awareness, and increased performance.
Though this process takes more time than just telling volunteers what to do, it is an investment that will help you uncover their full potential. Being provided with all the answers does not encourage learning or self-development. Coaching, on the other hand, teaches a process of problem-solving and analytical thinking is useful in all spheres of life.

Good coaching requires practice. When the rest our work and life moves at a blistering speed, coaching forces us to take a step back and slow down. For people used to firing off responses to questions or problems as quickly as possible, walking someone else through a problem-solving process can be hard to get used it. Additionally, it is really difficult to keep from jumping in with all the answers and solutions, especially if you feel like you know better.

As difficult as coaching can be at first, it gets easier. You will be rewarded with more thoughtful responses and a more capable volunteer-force. I will be back next month to introduce a model that will lead you step by step through the coaching process. Until next month, happy New Year and keep up the good work!

Elizabeth Cole is an AmeriCorps VISTA with the Maine Commission for Community Service and a guest blogger.