Executive Coaching - A Guide For The HR Professional.pdf

196 EXECUTIVE COACHING
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unique, some of the common elements that could occur during
implementation are
• Exploring for alternatives. You benefit from gaining
greater self-knowledge by understanding your feedback
data, reviewing previously successful and unsuccessful
efforts at behavior change, gathering new ideas, reading,
and observing others. In your sessions, the coach
frequently poses questions to encourage you to engage
in reflective thought. The coach provides a supportive
relationship in which you are stimulated to explore
new ideas, feelings, and behaviors. Often, the role of
the coach is described as that of a catalyst.
• Experimenting with new behaviors. The trust that is
established between you and your coach enables you
to experiment with new behaviors that may feel very
foreign initially, but which, in the long run, add to your
repertoire of adaptable responses. Some of the techniques
that help clients to feel more comfortable and
competent as they adopt new ways of interacting with
others are
• Rehearsing or role playing. Being able to practice possible
responses to anticipated situations lets you polish
skills and reduce some of the anxiety associated with
the fear of the unknown.
• Visioning. Professional athletes have known for quite
a while that increments in performance can be realized
just by imagining oneself giving a peak performance.
Whether it is a competency such as speaking
to a large audience or maintaining one’s composure
during meetings, if you can practice visioning optimal
performance, you are partway there.
Executive Coaching. Copyright © 2005 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Reproduced by
permission of Pfeiffer, an Imprint of Wiley. www.pfeiffer.com