Reflective entry after the first coaching activity of week 2 

Chi Phuong NGUYEN

Our first coaching was conducted in a meeting room in FSA building. The meeting room was ideal for conducting the coaching activity. Indeed, it allowed us to concentrate fully on coaching. We exchanged our roles of coach, coachee and observer within one hour. Even that it was the first time we met each other, we didn’t feel embarrassed with the coaching. It was a pleasant surprise for me. Each one knew about his/her role and managed to do the work. 

Noora started the session as a coachee and her knowledge about coaching was completed, giving us the whole overview of coaching from the purpose, environment, participants, key processes, to several factors of effective coaching. As a coach, I listened carefully and didn’t interrupt her until she finished. My questions concerned the benefits of the coach in the coaching session. Noora pointed several interesting points. Indeed, according to her, coachee can make mistakes and learn from those mistakes. Otherwise, there is no place for the coach to help the coachee to improve. Another point concerned the changing environment, the coach should help the coachee to adapt to those changes. Emotion of the coach is important as it can make the coachee to feel the empathy from the coach. When it came to Muriel as the coach, she did her job well. Her questions were not easy to answer but they enabled me to deepen in my thoughts, making some efforts to explain and make understood my ideas. She was patient to listen to my explanation. We also eased the coaching environment by making some jokes, facilitating the exchange among the participants. Muriel and Noora used a lot of eye contact and hand gestures in their coaching activity; those nonverbal forms of communication were really helpful for exchanging the ideas and creating a relaxing and amicable environment. Muriel mentionned that the coach should help the coachee to realize his potential and believe in himself. A good strategy can be applied is small wins; the coach can showed to the coachee about his small will to develop his confidence. We applied the key processes of coaching such as listening, mirroring, questionning, summarizing and catalyzing.

Finally, we summarized all of our ideas about good coaching and realized some important elements for effective coaching: relationship, no judgment, trust, dynamic process (on-going process), empowering, emotions, empathy, allowance for failure, potential.