Integral Coaching
PDF Although Brenda has years of experience as a trainer, mentor and coach, last year she discovered the effectiveness of ‘Integral Coaching’ and uses this approach in developing programmes for her clients. The outcomes are excellent.
Many successful people attribute significant life changes to working with a coach. One current example is that of Adele Paulsen, Executive Director of PRISA (Public Relations Institute of South Africa).
Adele Paulsen, Executive Director of PRISA.
Being coached by Brenda from December 2010 to May 2011 took me from being scared and indecisive in my business position to being confident of what I wanted to say and able to make decisions. This impacted both in my organisational role and in my personal life as well. Coaching allowed me to explore life, to see possibilities and then to ‘take action’. It was a journey where I first needed to understand who I was and what opportunities existed for me. Business colleagues and friends have told me that they notice a positive difference in me and that I’m ‘on a roll’. I’m coping much better on all levels. Through being coached, I have increased self-confidence and this has enabled me to ‘spread my wings and fly’.
Adele is currently engaged in a further programme and is being coached by Brenda on a separate ‘issue’.
What is coaching?
You may be curious as to what we mean by ‘coaching’? A coach is an ‘awakener’, a ‘guide’ or ‘personal navigator’ for life’s journey and can help you liberate yourself from being trapped in your old agenda. Limiting beliefs and other people’s expectations may be holding your back. Coaching can help you reach career and other goals that resonate with you because they align to your strengths and intentions. Coaching is a partnership between the coach and client where the conscious and creative process inspires the client to achieve full potential and then sustain their well-being.
The coach is the key to the client’s achievement of long-term excellence in professional and personal development. The coach helps the client to understand how s/he interprets the world and how this interpretation influences his/her choices and relationships. This process of reflection provides the basis for exploring new possibilities. At a practical level, it also forms the basis for the identification of competencies the client needs to develop greater personal fulfilment and professional effectiveness.
What is ‘integral coaching’?
It is a private one-on-one process focused on understanding, developing insights and actions that assist individuals in being more content and competent in the workplace and in their private lives.
Some types of coaching concentrate on the client’s behaviour and action in the workplace and/or private lives. Integral coaching recognises that our behaviour is underpinned by how we interpret the world around us. Integral coaching therefore goes beyond mere behaviour and works with all of these different aspects of the person’s ‘Way of Being’. Our thoughts, emotions, the language we use and the way we carry ourselves in our bodies, all impact fundamentally on how we interact with the world and address life’s daily challenges.
Integral coaching approaches and embraces the mystery of human beings by approaching the client holistically. This facilitates meaningful and sustainable change for the client.
What role can coaching play in business?
Coaching is an effective and powerful business tool. Executive coaching develops individuals so that they can be more effective, more fulfilled and as a result, better able to contribute meaningfully to their businesses in the short and long terms.
Improved individual performance, particularly at the Executive and Senior Management levels, is reflected in increased productivity and quality of work as well as less conflicts in relationships. These improvements impact directly on organisational performance. The one-on-one nature of the coaching process combined with the holistic focus on the employee as a human being (and more than a manager or employee) also provides for a more meaningful exploration of the person’s sense of fulfilment and job satisfaction. In addition, coaching can play an instrumental role in assisting employees to develop the self-awareness, competence and leadership capacity necessary to progress into Senior Management and Executive positions within business.
Leadership and coaching
Coaching helps leaders develop a clearer understanding of their roles and responsibilities. When leaders are more confident about what they need to do, they are better able to motivate employees and mobilise them for action.
Coaching can develop inspirational leaders who show up authentically at work – who can think deeply, reflect, and use their understanding, self awareness and belief in themselves and others to unify groups, initiate action and catalyse personal growth. Behavioural changes cascade down through the organisation.
Leaders who adopt a coaching style are the catalysts accelerating the development of the leadership gene pool in organisations. And coaching provides the safe space for these leaders to face up to some of the unique challenges that change brings. In this regard it is also playing an important role in talent development and succession planning.
