Reflective entry after second coaching session

Chi Phuong NGUYEN

We organized our second coaching session in a meeting room in the FSA building in the building as it ensures an ideal environment for discussing, avoiding all the disturbances and our brains are fresh.

As a coach, I found that Muriel told us a very interesting story about her experience of teamwork with a member in her class. It was a long story about how she perceived someone in observing his actions, gathering the facts, taking time and well reflecting before drawing conclusion about the person. What impressed me is that Muriel is a prudent person with mature thinking who didn’t jump directly to conclude on someone but taking time to examine other assumptions. She put herself in the shoes of others in thinking that everyone was busy in the first weeks to do the project and didn’t conclude on anything. But she picked several facts and data to draw a picture about someone. And she didn’t stay in the box of that pattern of thinking. When she had the chance to talk to the person, she understood his behaviour and gave him other chances to fix his errors. Actually, I learned a lot from this coachee, her approach to the issue, her careful examination of the issue, her adapting behaviour to the situation. I asked her to apply this experience to her life to see if she could benefit from that experience.

As a coachee, I took my time to explain to Noora about my experience with someone in my team for a project. My observation combined with my assumptions didn’t turn out to be true but I adapted my behaviour according to the situation. Listening to my confession, Noora made the link to a criticism of Hofstede’s model of cultural dimensions. Indeed, that model seemed to generalize people in a country but it was not true as several sub-cultures exist in a country. In my story, people come from the North of Vietnam have different values and thinkings comparing to those who come from the South.

We are enjoying more and more the coaching activities since those sessions allow us to confess, to share our ideas with those who really listen to us and also share their experience. Coaching is an opportunity for us to reflect ourselves in the experience of others as our stories under a common theme may contain several similarities and enable us to compare our different ways of approach. After listening, questionning and talking about our experience, we can conclude on the most efficient ways to solve a problem or improve ourselves in the future.  We often make the point after each coaching session. This time, regarding the ladder of inference, we all agreed that before taking any action, we have to be careful at making assumptions. It should be better to gather as much data and observation as possible, combining with other factors such as culture, social. And we shouldn’t avoid meeting and talking face-to-face to people to understand them or the issue better.