Coaching as a leadership style for personal, professional and organizational development. Part 1

The section, “Introduction to Emotional Intelligence coaching and Assessment,” taught that emotions are important in coaching. Mark McGuinness, author of Creative Management for Creative Teams says, “In addition to their core coaching skills, many external coaches have specialist expertise that makes them particularly suited to certain coaching assignments. Specialisms can include leadership, sales, negotiation, mediation, presentation skills, creativity, psychology and emotional intelligence” (McGuinness 16). Richard Boyatzis of Case Western University talks about a person who inspired us because they gave us a positive feeling about what we could achieve. That is a good coach with emotional intelligence as their specialty, the type of coach I hope to be. It was inspiring just learning that it was okay to be a positive coach rather than a negative one always criticizing.

Coaching should have a positive objective of getting the person being coached to perform their best. McGuinness says that coaching is goal-focused, and the goal is getting the person to do their best (McGuinness 26). While constructive criticism that is negative can be helpful, it should be balanced with more that is positive so that the person being coached feels good about themselves and looks forward to being coached rather than dreading it. I would rather inspire people in a way that they look forward to being coached than in a way that they dread it.

Coaches can achieve this emotionally intelligent coaching by listening to their coachees and looking at them to see what is going on with them. This develops empathy (McGuinness 27). Having empathy involved will always bring up emotions. One goal of coaching should be to get an emotional response. When emotions are involved, the coachees are more committed to the objectives (McGuinness 40). That is important to success for them and for me as the coach.