Executive Coaching - A Guide For The HR Professional.pdf

146 EXECUTIVE COACHING
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What was most helpful?
This is not in any particular order, but the items below stand out as
being most helpful:
• Excellent questions, evoked by active listening and his ability to
read between the lines of what I was saying.
• His ability to connect unrelated dots in a mental picture that I
might not be able to see.
• His ability to directly (yet respectfully) challenge my beliefs,
assumptions, and values, drilling to the root sources of each,
determining whether they still added value, were correct for me,
or needed to be let go.
• He provided timely, immediate, and helpful feedback. The
process was iterative . . . and we wasted very little time.
• He was open to my learning style, which is to reflect, write, and
offer reams of paper for him to read. He allowed me to do
this, and I could always count on a very thorough critique
of what I had written. This allowed me to be very concrete about
what I was thinking and feeling . . . and allowed him to check in
and understand what I was thinking and feeling.
• He is a wonderful reframer of issues. Often, my lenses just
needed a slight correction to see an issue more clearly.
• He often raised questions or issues that I had never considered
or was blind to.
• He brokered introductions to others who added their personal life
stories to my own assessment. This helped me significantly
expand my own sense of the realm of the possible.
• He focused me to balance both action and reflection.
• He never tried to play the role of being my “shrink.” We clearly
delineated life planning issues from psychological ones.
• He taught me to become comfortable being on a journey where
the destination is unknown. Also, I learned to embrace ambiguity
on a level that I had not previously.