Week 4 - Reflective Entry

During this coaching session, we decided to have a face to face meeting, because of the technical difficulties we experienced the last time. And personally I felt that it worked very nicely. We kept the conversation professional, and were able to use our time efficiently.

I found that as a coach this time, I wasn’t as nervous as the last time. I tried to focus on the five key processes, and felt that I managed this quite well. However, I still find the catalyzing part to be a bit of a challenge. I do feel motivated to help the development of my coachee, but I am still somewhat uncertain as of how to do this. But I asked clarifying questions, and sometimes did a brief summarizing to make sure that I had understood him correctly.

As a coachee I still found myself somewhat nervous about sharing my experience. I noticed that the others had had more relevant experience, whereas I didn’t. They have both worked in businesses relevant for our studies, while my example was from a job with no connection to my future career. But after I had shared my thoughts I relaxed more, and realized that there really wasn’t anything to be nervous about. I felt that my coach did a good job in asking me questions, and I felt that he really listened to what I had to say. He also asked me how it affected the working environment after I stopped supporting my coworkers in their talk about the manager. And to be honest I hadn’t really given it that much thought. But when he asked me I realized that the talking had in fact been reduced. It did not affect my relationship with my coworkers in any way, it just shifted the conversation from the manager and on to something else. I found this somewhat interesting to realize. Because often you might feel pressured into agreeing with someone, or into saying things you don’t really mean, and you do this in order to avoid a potential conflict. But in my case my point of view didn’t really affect our relationship. The other coworkers may not have changed their opinion about our manager, but the fact that I disagreed didn’t make them change their behavior towards me.

Being an observer I find very interesting. Because you don’t have to participate, you get to experience the coaching from a different point of view. And I find it interesting to see how the coach and the coachee interact. What I also noticed this time was that it was harder for me to move from the role of coach to the role of observer. There were times when I was about to interrupt and ask something, before realizing that I was not the coach this time. And I think the same applied for my colleagues as well. In fact, when I was done being a coach, the observer had a question of his own to the coachee. So it seems that perhaps the role of coach has taken over, we find this role intriguing and we are eager to develop our learning.