I attended a coaching workshop a few days ago that had me seriously considering what it is about the word Coaching that makes the world and his mother think that they can be a coach or go out to inspire others to “be their own coach”!

I think with hindsight the clue was in the title Be Your Own Coach!  I had read it as, “I will teach you how to be your own coach”, and being the kind of person who is both inquisitive about anything to do with coaching and a believer that there will always be something for me to learn from another great coach I went along fully expecting to leave with a new found appreciation for coaching.

An hour and half later I was the second person out of the door and paused to sigh the deepest sigh of relief with my fellow attendee at having got out.  We made eye contact and began chatting about how terrible the session had been.

Now don’t get me wrong I’ll be the first person in the queue for any new found approach, new angle on an old favourite or simply watching an artist at work and so I reflected on what had happened with my coaching hat on.

First off there was no PowerPoint ready to support the speaker, unusual I thought and obviously not compulsory. What did speakers do before PowerPoint?  I assume use a flipchart and the speaker did not use the flipchart until asked to write the questions up by another participant.  Unprepared or inexperienced?

Second off the presenter sat rather than stand and did not make much eye contact with anyone in the group except for the one man who had foolishly declared himself to be a coach here to brush up his skills.  Defensive would be the word I would use to describe the response.  Perhaps it was this that had distracted or unnerved the presenter!

Third off we were given a handout with the GROW model on it that looked like this:
G = Grow
R = Reality
O = Options
W = Will
The presenter did not notice the error until we all had the handout and it was being read to us!!

So what is GROW?  Well we were told that it is an acronym used to fix our terrible relationships.

To be fair I could have forgiven all of these things, if for one minute the presenter had shown any passion for the subject matter.  If she had tried to engage us in our process, or simply tried to impart any knowledge rather than tell us why what we had written (as she looked over our shoulder and read aloud each person’s personal notes) was not right.

Coaching is a facilitative process designed to enable the coachee to find the fire within, that place where there are no barriers, obstacles or uncertainties only possibilities, opportunities and adventure.

Perhaps I’ll get in touch with the presenter and offer coaching to improve their presenting skills, surely it can only improve!