The 9 skills to be a good coach

Much is said today about coaching, a discipline that is applied both in the personal field and in the world of business and sport. This methodology, which facilitates learning and promotes cognitive, emotional and behavioral changes, helps individuals and groups of individuals to enhance their development and transform, generating changes in perspective, generating commitment and responsibility and increasing the motivation.

• Related article: "The 10 benefits of Coaching (keys to your personal development)"

Necessary skills to be a good coach

Although there are many people who are dedicated to coaching, there are differences in terms of the quality of the service they offer. The difference between being a good coach and a bad coach is found in a series of competencies that you can find summarized in the following lines. These competencies they can be knowledge, personality traits, motives, attitudes or skills.

What skills should a good coach possess?

1. Empathy

The coach is a professional who, in order to do his job well, must understand the client's needs. For this reason, it is necessary that you empathize with him and understand her situation in order to lead the work sessions. The coachee (coach's client) is the one who reflects on her situation to empower herself in the face of change.

The coach is a facilitator and a gentle nuisance who accompanies the client in a coach-coachee relationship that builds understanding and trust.

• You may be interested: "Empathy, much more than putting yourself in someone else's shoes"

2. Constant training

It is essential that coaching professionals have exhaustive training, which starts with self-knowledge, and that It has no end, not only to know how to treat the coachee, but also to know the methodologies at your disposal to do your job well. job. In Spain there are excellent degrees related to this discipline that provide both theoretical and practical knowledge.

One of the most outstanding courses is the Certification Program in Executive Coaching of the European School of Coaching, which allows obtaining the Executive Coach title from the same academic institution and accredited as Accredited Coach Training Program by the International Coach Federation.

Participants acquire fundamental skills and tools for the work of the professional coach, and this program emphasizes everything related to individual accompaniment, leadership training and management of equipment. It is indicated for all types of leaders and team managers, as well as people in general who wish to acquire the skills and abilities necessary to practice as professional coaches.

For more information, you can contact the EEC through the available data in this link.

3. Active listening

There is a difference between hearing and listening, because listening refers to being attentive to what the interlocutor transmits to us. The coach must not only listen to the verbal language of the coachee, but must be able to interpret their non-verbal language to not only stay with the words but to know what emotions their client. Listening is being open so that the other's words change youTo listen is to generate that space for transformation.

4. Communication skills

The trust between the coach and the coachee and the good results are achieved thanks to an efficient communication between both. Powerful questions, paraphrasing, summarizing the coachee's words, collate and ensure that what is understood is what is meant is an essential task of the coach.

5. Motivation for customer reflection

When a coach makes the client reflect, when he inquires about her motivation, the client can broaden your gaze on yourself, on your actions, your beliefs and on your possibilities of action. Distinguish between commitment and obligation it is crucial to know where the motivation is.

5. Ethical responsibility

A coach must understand the ethics and professional standards of coaching, as well as put into practice the code of ethics of the profession. In this sense, it is not only valid to know these rules, but they must be applied in the day-to-day of your professional practice.

6. Coherence

To build trust, the coach must to be consistent in everything you say and communicate to the client. In the European School of Coaching (EEC), they talk about living the distinctions of coaching, for example, how the coach he must not only know what they are (responsibility, love or learning) but in fact "be" these distinctions and live them.

7. Patience

One of the keys when conducting coaching sessions is patience, as there may be questions depths on the part of the coachee and he can get in touch with his deepest emotions that require weather. The coach's patience is in respect the silences and also the depth of the work that the client wants to do and how far he wants to take what he is seeing. The coaching process is alive and co-created between the coach-coachee, but the absolute protagonist is the client.

8. Derive when necessary

Coaches are personal development professionals and not psychologists who offer psychological therapy (except for some who are also clinical psychologists). Therefore, his objective is not to treat his clients when they suffer any emotional or relational problems or disorder, and his responsibility is to refer them to other experts if necessary.

9. Establish trust and intimacy with the client

Building trust with the coachee is a necessary first step for the coaching process to be successful, and actually It is almost an art, which starts with vulnerability and with balance in the relationship. “The coach is not a mentor, he is not above in any way, the coach is an equal who cannot know what the correct decisions are for each person. The coach only accompanies them to discover new looks, new options and new actions to achieve the challenge declared by the client ”, they say in EEC.