Part 2: The art of Listening, additional Assessments Boyatzis - What Does Great Leadership Coaching Look Like https://www.youtube.com/watch?... Part 3: Emotional Self -Awareness: The skill of perceiving and understanding one’s own emotions The capacity to identify and understand the impact one’s own feelings is having on thoughts, decisions, behavior and performance at work

Part 2

The second part of the class was called, “The Art of Listening.” This section talks about how coaches inspire their coachees to be better leaders. Susan Ennis, Judy Otto, Lewis Stern, et al., authors of Principles and Guidelines for a Successful Coaching Practice echo McGuinness when they say that listening attentively with an open mind is one of the objectives of coaching (Ennis, Otto and Stern 30). They also bring up the emotional elements of coaching when they say, “Uses active listening techniques (e.g., maintaining full attention, periodically summarizing, being non-judgmental) to reflect and acknowledge the other person’s feelings and concerns” (Ennis, Otto and Stern 65). This is different than what most people think about business leaders. Most think they are driven people who lead because they are driven by some other passion such as a passion for power or wealth. I had not thought that perhaps a business leader can be driven by a desire to achieve success in leadership. It makes sense that a person wanting to achieve in this way would want a coach to help them.

In a video, Gregg Thompson talks about how leadership coaches will not coach unsuccessful leaders. If a person is a failure at leadership, a leadership coach is not going to help them. If they are a good leader, then a leadership coach can help them to be even better by teaching them about emotional intelligence, listening, and other aspects of leading.

I like this approach because it says that one needs to believe they are successful at least to want to have a coach, and the coach can only help a person get better and achieve the goals that the person being coached sets for him/herself. “Executive coaching is driven by specific goals agreed upon by all members of the coaching partnership. Such goals are based on feedback data that identify skills, behaviors and knowledge that the executive needs to develop to achieve specific business results” (Ennis, Otto and Stern 41). Despite the goals that are set by the person being coached, the coach has only one objective according to Thompson, helping the coachee to accelerate their ability as a leader (Thompson). Because of this, coaches will not offer advice, they will be positive but they will challenge their coachee and not pamper them. This sounds more like the conventional idea of coaches to me.

I am not so sure I agree with Thompson on some of what he says about coaching and the methods used by coaches. The fact that there was annoying—probably supposed to be inspiring—music playing in the background throughout the entire video did not help Thompson to sound credible to me. He has some good ideas but they seemed to be nearly opposite of what McGuinness says. Thompson makes it sound as if coaches are just constantly challenging a person, and while that is good, there is little emotion involved in it. Perhaps it is better as a coach to remember that one is coaching another human being that has emotions. Maybe one does not have to baby the person, but one does not have to be a stubborn, mean jerk either.

The parts of what Thompson says that I agree with include where he says that coaches offer a fresh perspective; however, just about anyone, such as a close friend, can offer that. I also like that Thompson says that coaches get the people they coach to ask themselves questions such as: “Have I earned the right to lead? Do I really help others? Is my team innovative? Do I create alignment throughout my organization?” (Thompson). These are important questions to find answers for, but a good leader should be able to ask and answer these questions without a coach. Perhaps Thompson does not really mean that coaches only coach already successful leaders because if they were successful they would have already asked and answered these questions.

Part 3

The last part of this class was about emotional self-awareness, or the ability to understand one’s own emotions, and emotional expression, the skill of expressing one’s own emotions effectively. These are definitely important skills to have as McGuinness points out. Being able to understand one’s own emotions and express them in a meaningful way ensures that when others do the same, one can have empathy for them. It is important to have empathy for the person one coaches because, as a coach, one needs to know what motivates, inspires, frightens, angers, etc. the person they are coaching. Then the coach can work with those emotions to bring out the best that the coachee can be. McGuinness says, “The ability to empathise with the coachee is critical to the coaching process, as it not only helps the coach to accept the other person on their own terms, but also sometimes to ‘tune in’ to emotions and thoughts of which they are not fully aware” (McGuinness). That way, as T