Executive Coaching - A Guide For The HR Professional.pdf

54 EXECUTIVE COACHING
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comfortable and competent as they adopt new ways of
interacting with others include
• Rehearsing or role playing. Being able to practice possible
responses to anticipated situations lets clients
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 clients can practice visioning
optimal performance, they are partway there.
• Problem solving. Coaches generally are good at asking
clients questions to stimulate their thinking to arrive
at creative solutions. The idea is that eventually the
clients may learn to do creative problem solving on
their own.
• Role clarification. Understanding everyone’s role in a
given business/social situation can help clients to act
appropriately and pick up important social cues.
Coaches can help clients foster role clarity for themselves
and in their organizations.
• Creating an action plan. An action plan consists of
several components. It can be used to establish a
goal, define the measures that will be used to determine
whether or not the goal has been reached, and
to explain the actions to be taken to reach the goal,
the resources needed, significant milestones, and completion
dates. This type of action plan can be used by
the coach and the client in tracking development
goals. In Section V, you’ll find a sample action plan as
well as a blank form that you can reproduce for your
own use.