Reflective entry by Yuchen

My role as a coachee:

This week’s coaching session was really helpful to me. After talking about my “terrible experience” with a mal-functional team, my coach helped me realize that during team building process, communication and inspection are both important. He demonstrated this with an example of scientists and engineers who collaborate to complete a task. As the scientists need to plan for the project, they also need to communicate with engineers and make sure that the engineers understand the purpose of the process they designed in order for better participation of all members. An important lesson I learnt from this story is that each member, no matter what his role is, must understand the goal of the team so that they won’t feel that they don’t belong to it.

In my team, what happened was that the new member of the team might feel she was “the third wheel of a bicycle”. With the help of my coach, I realized that it’s important for team leader to periodically inspect the commitment of his team members and ask about their opinion. As a result, team members, including the new comers would be encouraged sharing their opinions without being afraid of break the harmony within the team, and therefore they would participate and engage themselves more to the team activities.

In addition, I realized that on the other hand, it was her (new comer’s) responsibility as well to be more proactive. All of us should make extra efforts to “rock the boat” since the problem won’t come out themselves and the team building processes won’t flow without intervention.

My role as a coach:

For another time, I was really inspired by how Awa talked about the skillful leader that she had worked with. She had briefly mentioned this leader in the session of last week. I had a sense that she was really impressed and convinced by the leader. However, to my surprise, she told me that this manager wasn’t a charismatic leader and it’s not the manager’s personality that made him an admirable leader. She explained that the manager was actually a successor of a very popular manager who intended to influence his subordinates by building personal relationship and turning this into his own personal assets. However, the new manager conducted a very different way. Although he has kept suitable distance with his subordinates, he made them feel that he was accessible and he would listen to their opinions. In addition, he used very creative way to organize the meetings. In short, the manager has demonstrated that he had the competency in commutation and management so that his subordinates would follow him.

great team and great leaders by Awa DIALLO

Just like all our coaching sessions, this one has been very educational in our different perceptions of good teams. However, we all worked in different environments, one aspect is always found in our experiences, effective team working goes through effective communication.

David emphasised this aspect at his workplace by explaining how in meetings where technicians, engineers and managers are present, one needs to make sure that technicians knows and understand that their opinion and thoughts about the task are needed. They must contribute to the good outcome of the meetings and the great performance of the teams. Not just by being able to do what engineers ask them to do; but by also being able to analyse a situations suggests better ways to perform a task.

Bob had a bad experience when working in a team that ended splitting up because one of the members left the team. That team member did not speak up for her ideas and she was following the lead of the two other team member. Writing about it now, I think, made Bob realised that they might not have given her the opportunity to express her feelings and thoughts about the subject they were analysing at the time. I learned that in the Chinese culture, you do not oppose to what the majority is saying. That resulted in a team member that did not agree with the team’s choices and could not say it. All the frustration could have been avoided if the team was aware of her difficulties to speak up for her ideas, and if they made her feel and understand that her suggestions were essential for the team’s performance.   

Depending on our experiences, we learned different lessons that I believe will make us great managers. Indeed, as an MBA student and a Future manager, I understand that I have to make every member of the team I am supervising understand and know for sure that their opinion is needed for the wellbeing of the team; considering any restrictions that they may have, either cultural or personal. From my own experience, I know that to get people committed to their workplace, a great manager has the duty to make them understand that they are an essential part of the company; for the company to be at its best, they all need to perform their best.

teamwork reflective posting DDemers

In general, I must state that this coaching exercise (teamwork) was much easier - the opinions and lessons learned seemed to flow out much more easily.  In our "meetings" coaching sessions there were occasional awkward silences, while during the teamwork coaching sessions even our observers could not resist adding their observations into the coaching conversations.

As a coach this session was very "rewarding" as my coachee seemed to have learned a lot from his personal before-coaching blog and also during the coaching session.  His experience was a team that "ended badly", partially due to inequalities among the team members.  At the end of the coaching session he came to realize that team progression through the "forming-norming-storming-performing" stages had dependencies on cultural and even personal backgrounds.  He came to realize that when some team members had already made it to the norming stage (due to previously being on the same team), it is important to make extra efforts to help "new" team members feel like they are part of the team.  However, the new team member also has some responsibility, it is not just up to the existing team members to take the initiative to ensure that the team structure naturally enlarges itself.

As a coachee I came to understand that communications, in particular effective communications, are critical to effective teamwork for team reports.  The team that I had given as an example (MRK class) used Facebook as a means of coordinating.  At certain points in our teamwork communications, there were so many new postings that the important messages were sometimes falling through the cracks.  The fact that we virtually never had face-to-face meetings meant that it was difficult to communicate messages to all members of the team and have "deeper more philosophical" discussions of what are the important points to be included within our marketing team assignments.  The only way to assert one's ideas within the group dynamics is to put text within the report that is being revised and updated from time to time.  I have low self-confidence in the "writing about marketing" skills, and low self-confidence in my writing in French skills, so I find it difficult to assert my ideas in this particular framework.  This fundamental comprehension of my weaknesses (inability to assert in such cases) is part of the reason behind me changing my MBA program from Global Business to Supply Chain Management (SCM).  The coursework in SCM will be in French, but it is a more "quantitative" subject area and I will fell much more comfortable being assertive in teamwork situations.

The characteristics of a team by Yuchen

It’s not easy to accept failure, especially when it’s the failure of a whole team. In one of my other courses, we had a group of three people, two guys and one girl, and we were supposed to deliver two team projects. The first project is a group presentation of an analysis of Sport brand commercial, the other one is a 30 pages paper. Everything was on track until the first Tuesday after the reading week and one week before our presentation, when one of our teammates left the class. The rest of us were shocked, angered then confused. We managed to deliver the presentation but that was also the end of our group. We had to split up and look for other groups that would accept us for the last team project.

Now since I finally have some time to review what went sour in the team building process that lead to the unfortunate split. To be honest, I blamed her for weeks and never had a single thought of if it was me to be blamed and it actually is. Before she left, I thought our team was creative and effective because each time we met (once per two weeks but the other guy and I contacted often), we had solid progresses on the subject. The team also looked diversified in terms of different background, gender and capability, though we are all from China. One potential problem was none of us tent to lead the team, but at the moment we thought it was OK.

However, the real reason is underneath the peaceful surface. First, we didn't manage to create a friendly and trustful atmosphere for all of us. When the team was formed, the other teammate and I knew each other which made the girl a new comer to the team. However, either he or I bothered to establish the sense of security for the new comer; we just went directly to the business and thought that would be sufficient. As a result, we lost our magnetism and therefore, people no longer wanted to affiliate with this team. In addition, when one person in the team talked too much (it’d be me in our situation), the other members might feel unappreciated since they couldn't share their opinions equally. In the end, since nobody was in the middle to communicate with each member, we couldn't know what people's true feelings were, and finished our team with the split.

There are several things I think we could improve. First, create a trustful environment for the new comer as it’s the foundation of any teamwork. Second, have one person to lead the group. Last but not least, encourage all members to share opinion in order to facilitate the coherence and avoid from letting someone feel undervalued.

reflective posting from meetings - late, I forgot :-(

I found this coaching session the most difficult so far.  As a coachee I had difficulty coming up with good and poor meeting experiences.  However, after reading other blog posts and hearing other coach-coachees as observer, I came up with other examples.  I found that meetings of about one hour for passing messages throughout an organization are very effective.  I mentioned the framework of an upper management COmité des OPérations (COOP) meeting on Monday morning, followed by a meeting of section head, admin assistant and group leaders was very effective for passing messages and ensuring that communications channels were open.  While I was a group leader for a scientific group, we also found that having group meetings (when all members could be present) was very effective in helping to coordinate and ensure collaboration among the various R&D initiatives within the group.  When I was group leader for informatics personnel we had group meetings only occasionally since the informatics support function is mostly made up of individual interventions.  For the most part, ad hoc coordination was all that was needed.  Meetings were held mostly for periodic budgeting (determining how much money would be needed for software purchases, training, determining priorities etc.) and developping annual business plans.

As a coach I found it somewhat surprising how well the coachee was able to coordinate and brainstorm a group presentation with only limited interactions beforehand.  He said that the group felt energized (by the looming deadline :-) and really got their creative juices flowing.  As a group they were so pleased with the advancing of their work package that they did not realize that another meeting to polish up their group presentation was needed.  That is one thing that is very important to realize when doing group presentations.  Some people are very good at doing impromptu presentations and at understanding how to transition from one presenter to another, but it is not natural for all presenters.  Practicing beforehand is important to help ensure all are "on the same page".

I learnt from this exercise that there are many surprising twists and turns and detours on the road to running effective meetings.  Preparing beforehand and ensuring that all members are given the opportunity to "do their homework" in advance is critical to creating a smooth-running meeting.  Of course, not all meetings are meant to be smooth-running, an example being budgeting meetings where it is difficult to come to win-win solutions (there is only so much money to go around).  In cases such as these, and also where participants may not have the same understanding regarding the planned outcomes, it is critical for the meeting organizer to create a common understanding before the meeting starts.  With a common understanding of the desired outcomes from the meeting there is a much better chance for the discussions to stay "on topic" and ensure that all efforts reach toward the desired meeting goals.

Reflective entry by Yuchen

As coach, this week’s coaching session was conducted with three steps. First, we discussed the two scenes that she posted in the blog, more in details. Second, we evaluated the pros and cons of these meetings. Finally, we summarized the coaching with two questions: “what are the conditions of a successful meeting?” and “what are the competencies a manager should have to organize an effective meeting?” My expectation with these steps was that to help my coachee to crystallize the supportive factors of an effective meeting and the reason why participants were not engaged, and then I would conclude with the two questions to see if the coaching session has exceeded my expectations.

After the small talks to warm up a bit, we continued with my questions on the first meeting my coachee introduced in her blog. As she was saying, there were actually two types of meeting in her company, one was conducted on a weekly basis concerning employees’ performance, their KPI etc, and the other one was a 30-minute daily informative meeting concerning the sales data of each person. The organizer of the latter one was the manager on his shift at that day. According to my coachee, neither of them was constructive and effective until the intervention of top management due to the planning and preparation of the management team. As for the second meeting experience, my coachee expressed her learning on the situation where she was surrounded by senior employees who were mean to her at first.

In the next step, I planned to evaluate the pros and cons with two aspects, the aspect of manager and the aspect of meeting process. As we discussed, we found that the managerial skills, especially the communication skills of a manager are important since he will need to convince participants with authority as well as respect. The way he communicates in the meeting may influence the result whether it’s a decision-making or brainstorming meeting. On the other hand, we found that sometimes the participants are not fully engage with the meeting due to the clarity of the meeting purpose, the process and the planning. As my coachee’s first meeting experience shows, one way to improve the participants’ moral and commitment in an informative meeting is to recognize their work before discussing the statistics. My coachee connected this with motivation theory as the recognition of their works improved their job satisfaction and therefore motivated them. In this regards, they were more committed to the meeting.

Finally we concluded our coaching session with the two questions mentioned above, and I think my expectations were mainly exceeded. Personally I think this coaching session was really helpful as it actually gave me clear methods to organize my coaching process and I'm grateful for having Awa and David sharing their priceless experience on organizational meetings.

effective team leader by Awa Diallo

The assignment about meetings and interviews got me thinking about this manager that I had in my last workplace. To get workers interest about the meetings, he always tries to include activities that will involve all attenders’ participation. As I explained in a previous post, he included a sort of award ceremony in the weekly meetings in order to get employees involved and interested about the company’s key performance indicators, and all in a fun a way.

Therefore, during the whole week, employees always do their best in order to improve the company’s status; he was also able to implement a good competition spirit within the same team. That means we will still compete to get the best results, be we were all aware that all our efforts were to make the team perform well.

I think he was able to perform this well regarding those meetings because he was genuinely interested about the workers, and he had strong managerial and people skills. Even though he was a senior manager leading a group of employees half his age, he was able to find out what would get them more interested and increase their implication at the workplace.

Before taking actions, he observed and studied the whole group spirit and he was able to make everyone understand his opinion and feelings about the company, and he was able to make everyone feel the same way: we are all on the same boat and we need, each in our part, work our best, but still with each other, in order to make our boat move forward. 

coaching call conclusions by Awa Diallo

During this coaching call, I realised that we all had positive and negative meeting experiences but it was very constructive for all of us. David and I did not conduct a “5P” analysis of our meeting experiences, but during the coaching call, it was very interesting to see how our experiences happened differently but were kind of linked in the conclusions and lessons we learned from them.

The first one that I think is very important is the need of preparation beforehand. Indeed, if you and the team participant are not aware of the meeting purpose and are not prepared well, the meeting will be a waste of time.

Secondly, it is very important to be able to listen and get yourself listened, and all that goes through respect and effective communication. For example, speak loud enough for you to be heard, but do not scream at people. Define a purpose for your meeting and do not get away from it to avoid getting out of subject.

Also, not as easy and evident as it appears, but get everyone interested in what you are saying, be clear and concise on you intervention.

Most of the meetings we discussed were informative meetings, where the team leader had information to give to the meeting attenders; or where the leader needed to be debriefed in the current situation in the different sections of his company. However, David also talked about his brainstorming meeting experience that happened at his workplace. For those to be successful, it was necessary for everyone to be able to listen and build up on ideas that were previously suggested.

This coaching call really helped me understand what we needed to do for this week’s assignment. In fact, it was interesting to see how we can all learn from each other’s experiences and different perceptions of our experiences. When I thought that my meeting experience was bad, Yuchen thought it was a positive experience as I was able to get myself respected from older people.

Finally, we all understood that in our future meetings as managers, we need to respects some fundamentals (cited before) in order to conduct really successful meetings.

Positive meeting experience by Yuchen

I've had a very impressive and positive meeting last semester when the three of us met together in order to prepare our book presentation. Before the meeting, we had completed our slides and speech for the presentation individually, but we haven’t integrated our parts yet. So the goal of the meeting was very clear: we need to combine our parts and see if the book presentation can take shape. To explain in details the positive sides as well as some drawbacks of the meeting , I would like to conduct the 5Ps of Effective Meetings.

Purpose: I believe that we've done a good job with the first P. The meeting was called because we needed to share information. Since we prepared our parts separately and each one of us must had some information that others wouldn't know, it was important to meet together and see if we could combine the fragmented parts into a complete presentation. Much to our surprises, through the brainstorming process, we achieved our original goals successfully, and apart from that we also managed to change our platform for the presentation as well (from Powerpoint to Prezi).

Participants: In regard of Task–Process dimension of meeting composition, our meeting was balanced well between task and process. Indeed, it would be easier as our previous meetings normally started with some irrelevant small talks in order to create a comfort environment, but this time we decided to push ourselves to the task instead. However, changing our default styles brought us some confusion at the beginning because we didn't know to what degree we can accept the conflicts during the meeting. We all felt a little bit embarrassed when we had to “criticize” people, but by avoiding giving evaluative feedback, we had a good ambiance after all. Another lesson I learnt from this meeting is that we gave each other constructive advises and most importantly we recognized each other's work. Having experienced an unpleasant team, I realize that when you have to correct someone's wrong, it's better to start with the recognition of  his work otherwise he would probably be very defensive on your opinion. It'll only fuel the conflict.

Planning: The third P was the one we didn't put too many efforts into. We didn't have a concrete agenda for the meeting. Perhaps it was more time-consuming (it took us nearly 3 hours) but on the other hand, since we didn't have a fixed agenda, we were able to be more creative on our task which I think is more important than just focusing on the agenda.

Participation: There was no doubt that we expected all of us to participate as much as possible, and as explained above, we were very tolerate to propositions that seemed to be off-topic as long as it would be constructive to the presentation. Our meeting was largely succeeded although there was a vital mistake due to our decision making process that we made the decision with everyone’s agreement. One teammate gave up her idea on which chapter was more important simply because the rest of us disagreed with her and therefore we didn't go deeper in this topic, so it’s not hard to imagine that we felt regret when it turned out that we missed some important aspects in the book. To make it worse, we didn't summarize our meeting at the end because we were too optimistic with our “master piece”.

Perceptive: Since the meeting was so fruitful, we didn't stop and think what was potentially missing in our meeting, leaving the bomb unsolved in the following meetings until it exploded in the presentation.

Meeting experiences by Awa Diallo

As a student we are always subjects to meetings and group work, school assignment are generally performed in teams and the team efficiency usually reflect on the grade the team gets. in the retail industry, where I used to work, we would have a meeting every morning to talk about the previous day performances, the budget and expectations for the day. At the end beginning of each week, there would also be a meeting that outlines the previous week performances, and point the expected revenues and general numbers for the coming week. Usually, those meetings always last for around ten minutes, and are only informative about the numbers we need to be aware of.

At some point, people were not really interested in those meetings anymore, as we could see the numbers in the staff canteen, and there was not really news every week. So people would just sit and listen and not participate, or they would come in late because they feel like the meeting could be missed and that it was not really important. One day, the top manager realised that he needed to put the importance of those meetings back at the point they were. Therefore, he decided to include short award ceremony to the team meetings, for example the team member that would have performed the best the day before would get a free drink from him at lunch, and depending the amount, he would get a free whole lunch.  The excitement that came out of that new strategy was not really from the reward side of it, but more from the acknowledgment of your performances in front of everyone. From then, weekly and daily team meetings meant something else, not just a listing of the important numbers for the store, but also the way personal performances are recognized and rewarded.

I think the way this meeting has been managed was very well done. Indeed, the management team knew how to involve workers by using incentives instead of punishment. As a motivational factor, it was very effective for them to use a reward strategy in order to increase workers commitment to their duties. In fact, an increase in sales has been observed couple of weeks later.

I also had a not so bad experience during an internship in Senegal. I was responsible for implementing new disciplinary rules for the workers, and culturally the Senegalese is not a much disciplined person. Therefore it was a challenge for me, a young girl, who had the age of their daughter to tell them that they had to perform one way and not the other. I was leading a meeting where I had to present my program to the unit’s chiefs, around 10 men. When I started the presentation, they were asking questions to make me uncomfortable, there was particularly one that everyone followed, and he was not the meanest but was not especially welcoming as well. During the meeting I called all the strength in my body and reprimanded him in front of everyone else, I was not really proud of that action, but then it allowed me to gain others respect. Indeed, the understood that I was not afraid of them, that I was there to do my job and I had the intention to do it properly.

 ing : How to offer, give and receive help

Positive meeting experiences, DDemers

The meetings that I have seen that go the best are those where the meeting leader (and other participants) do a lot of preparatory work.  I find that informal meetings with fewer attendees that already know each other do not need extensive preparation.  However, once the number of attendees gets to be ten or more, then it is very easy for the meeting to get “derailed”.  Most of the meetings that I have seen go well are more information sharing than decision making.  It is very difficult to have a decision making meeting with a large number of participants.  There are frequently divergent views and only participants that feel comfortable “laying it on the line” speak up.  In my experience, for decision-making meetings, with more than about five or six people, either “group-think” will set in or the conversation tends to degenerate into “side-bars” where a common understanding of the issues is lacking due to several parallel conversations.

Some of the best meeting experiences for me were during brain-storming sessions.  Ground rules must be set (no criticizing, building on other’s ideas is encouraged), and it works well to have attendees first do some “alone” work in preparation.  After the initial burst of ideas, it is important that the leader keep the momentum going.  The initial burst of ideas can be quite draining for some participants, and stopping for a break allows some people to think up new ideas or build on existing ones, information that is shared when the meeting resumes.

For information-sharing meetings, it is important that attendees receive advance copies of presentations.  That permits the attendees to be better prepared during the presentations, and having the copy means that the attendees do not need to waste time writing out slide contents.  Also, the participants may have to concentrate on taking notes and miss other important points that the presenter was making.  One of the best run information sharing meetings that I experienced was our annual R&D program reviews.  Each project to be presented had to use a standard format (quad-chart) plus one or two more informational slides, five to ten minutes per project.  This was a very economical means (time wise) for the management team to become aware of what research was being done throughout the organization (about 400 staff).  For the upper management, there were fewer “surprises”, finding out about R&D at their home centre from military clients.  For middle management, it gave an overview of what was happening throughout the centre.  The shared knowledge of what R&D axes were being investigated facilitated focusing R&D on operational challenges and also aided in the creation of intra and inter research centre R&D collaborations.

Marketing 6004 Team Characteristics analysis by David Demers

Team Characteristics (D Demers)

The team that I am assessing is my team for Marketing 6004.  The good point of this team is that once we get organized, the work gets done fairly well, although there are some stragglers that finish their parts a bit on the late side.  In fact, that is the big problem, there was no one that “took the bull by the horns” early enough in the project work to divide up the tasks and gets the ball rolling during our first group project.  The result was that our work was somewhat “last minute”.

To attempt to change our ways and shake things up, I have tried to get us rolling for our second group project that is due on 15 April.  I feel like I am being a bit “pushier” than I usually am, as normally I am a follower and not a leader, at least in subjects where I am not very strong (like Marketing).  For the project there are 5 initial questions (1x5%, 3x10%, 1x15%) based on the “case”, then the 6^th question (50%) is to propose a marketing strategy.  I asked the other four members to each pick a question to answer (I will do the remaining one), and also to “put something down on paper” for the marketing strategy (do a virtual brainstorming, then put the best ideas together as our response for Q6).

If I were to assess our team on the “forming, norming, storming, performing” spectrum, I would say that the forming and norming stages were achieved during our first group work.  The division into work units with each person taking one was done, then the revision process leading to the final version was a relatively efficient collaboration.  I hope that my proposition for division of work for our second group work will get the ball rolling, and if I judge our team’s work ethic well, we will do (brain-)storming then performing to come up with a proposed marketing strategy.  That is my hope at least J.

There is a big difference between our team that will achieve respectable results and “brilliant teams” like those that take part in “MBA games” type activities on the marketing side.  Watching teams like those “makes my head spin”, their thought processes are wickedly fast, with the ability to come up with original and innovative solutions.  I believe that our team is doing well with “the elements in place”, and I believe that our results are going to be very close to optimal for our team’s capabilities.  I am hoping that by getting all team members starting on their tasks rapidly that we will achieve very respectable if not spectacular results for our second group project.

Reflective entry by Yuchen (Gratitude journal)

This week was an opportunity for me to make a thoughtful coaching session to think about for whom or which I am thankful, and what I need to do to lead a positive change.

As a coach for this assignment, I tried to connect our grateful journey to our course material, and get my coachee focus on how would she reflect her gratitude and her learning from the person she is grateful for to a situation where she, as a manager, has to help her employees out, and potentially lead a positive change to her subordinates. So I first asked my coachee what she learned from her mom’s methods of supporting in order for her to reflect how she would do in the same situation. Then I went on to see how she would deal with negative energizer or negative deviance if she was placed as manager and her new employee (as negative energizer) was having interpersonal problems. She told me that she would not judge people and she would first reflect on the situation before she spoke with the person involved. In addition, my coachee told me that she would evaluate a person not only by his or her performance, but also by the other aspects, such as the relationship with colleagues. As a manager, my coachee would try to make her firm as a family to all employees and help new comers to build a good relationship with others and perform well. My coachee also explained a few hints she learnt from her mother. For instance, she would try to influence a person’s decision rather than get she involved with the decision making process since she would face less resistance.

As coachee, I tried to open up and felt that I’ve got much more to say than what I've written. I've reconnected with my deepest feeling towards my family. My coach is always able to trigger the conversation and the flow went out naturally as he kept our conversation in the most comfortable track. He asked many interesting questions so that I could share as much as I can. I couldn't remember how we touched the topic of choosing classes where Awa jumped in, and she shared openly with her inspiring story of conquering fears, while David advised me to pick classes that could be quantified so that I could avoid too much written works.

After this coaching session, I could feel something has changed inside me. The gratitude journal makes me be aware of the positive deviance in my life. In addition, sharing the gratitude was also an interesting experience since it’s not very common in my culture to express gratitude. It helped me to re-enjoy the happy moments I had before and really motivated me when I was sharing those moments.

gratitude coaching session (David Demers)

Perhaps the most significant common theme of our (as coach, coachee, observer) gratitude journals was that everyone was grateful for their family, for their support and encouragement.  As a coach, I was surprised and actually a bit in awe regarding the depth of emotion that our discussion of gratitude brought out.  It is difficult to express our gratitude directly to the people that we are grateful for, so just talking about it causes many conflicting emotions.

As coach my coachee expressed his gratitude and his realization that life is fragile.  There was a terrorist incident in the area where his parents live, and while waiting for confirmation that they were OK, he reflected on all he had to be grateful for.  His parents supported him financially and spiritually.  His father was a military officer that was away a lot.  He did not express it in words, but my coachee knew that his father was “pulling for him”.  He was also very grateful for the strength of character of his mother.  It was due to her influence that he was able to study for his MBA in Canada.  He is very grateful for his studies here, as his learning experience has been a mind-opening experience, very different than graduate studies in China might have been.  The presentations and group work assignments are challenging and in some cases “mind-expanding” experiences.  My coachee is a bit reticent regarding taking classes in French, but we (coach and observer) have told him to take the plunge.  He could perhaps start with a course that is more numerical (such as accounting) instead of a course that would require a lot of written work.

As coachee I stated that I did not express my gratitude very often to the people that I am grateful to.  I do occasionally tell my son and daughter that I am proud of them.  I try to make sure that I can be specific about why I am proud of them as I think that it makes it “more meaningful”.  Although I did not mention my parents in the gratitude journal, I am indeed grateful for their support while I was growing up.  They did not push me into any particular direction, but they did support me through my Bachelor degree university studies.

This coaching experience has gotten me to better appreciate what I have to be grateful for.  Even if things are difficult, there is so much good in life to be grateful for.  I will try to take advantage of opportunities to express gratitude and to give specific and positive feedback in my personal and professional life.  To not let those opportunities pass me by, that is my “take-away” from this coaching session.

Gratitude coaching session by Awa DIALLO

This week's coaching assignment really helped me realised that I have a lot to be grateful for. A part from my mother and the travelling opportunities, I could also be grateful for so many things that I take for granted. Being able to go on holiday every year for example, the opportunity to discover different parts of the world; or just because I have received a personal education good enough to be the adult I am today. My coachees also are grateful for their personal lives and for their educational accomplishments. As you can see in other posts in the blog, we are all grateful for our parents and life partners, as well as the opportunity to receive an international education at Ulaval. Those things we are all grateful for are here, I mean it is normal, natural to be grateful about them without expressing it. Just as Yuchen, we do not express feelings very openly in my culture either. Everyone knows that the feeling is here, like my mother knows that I love her. However, I don’t think I ever told her that I feel very lucky to have her as a mother and I am grateful for that. So, after writing about her in my grateful assignment, I started calling her more often (almost twice a day when I usually talk to her every two days), and it kind of made me feel good. Every time she encourages me into being a better person, to work hard to get what I want… So this week nothing really changed positively, but my feelings were emphasised, and I am grateful for a lot of good factors in my life that I take for granted.

Same goes for my coachees, they are very grateful for what they talked about in previous posts. But writing about it made them realised that there is a lot to be grateful for in their lives after all. Not just family and university or work. We all have the opportunity to study a subject we are interested in, we are all meeting new people that somehow turns to be very good friends; and for some of us who are far from home, those friends are family.

Putting more focus on positive change now, I think it is very important to let people know what you feel about them. In a professional environment, do not hesitate, as a manager, to openly congratulate your employees that perform outstandingly. It is a core motivational factor, and one of the best ways to promote positive change in the work place. Be fair and honest about it. You, the manager, have to be grateful for having great employees, and employees in turn have to be grateful for their work position. To emphasize that feeling, I think it would be great to be able to express one’s feelings.

Gratitude Journal by Yuchen

There are so many things for which I feel so thankful, but the first idea came to my mind are my parents, without any surprise. I am so grateful for having them support me. For me, they are the great wall that protects me from negative emotions especially when I am a stranger in this land. Their supportive power surrounds me whenever I feel low even though we are thousands miles away from each others. 

However, they have a very different way of showing their love and care. My father served the army for nearly 20 years and it has made him a tough and conservative man, and a tough man is not good at express his feelings. He’s always restraint about it. I remember that he never said he’s proud of me or complimented what I've achieved; he just stood there and nodded his head like he’s commanding his man. So it’s quite surprising and so happy to me when I heard he said “yes, I miss you son” after I asked him if he missed me while we were in a video chat several weeks ago, and I could see my mom tried so hard to cover her smile. My parents are positive energizers to me. Even if they won’t say compliments about my work, but I just feel so fulfilled and happy when talking those tiny things in our lives, something like mom met an old friend and had a nice cup of tea, or dad played Chinese chess with their neighbor could make me feel that I never so close to my family.

Another thing I am grateful for is my opportunity to study here in Ulaval. No matter how hard my study was and will be, being able to pursue an MBA in Quebec is by far one of the most amazing experiences I have ever had. Being able to study here is rewarding in many ways.

Had it not been for Ulaval, I would have never encountered so many interesting people or experienced such a dynamic way of education. I would not have the knowledge and skill I have now, I would not meet my teammates who offer me a warm and helpful climate for me to nurture my readiness to change.

In China, we always say to know others is easy but to know oneself is hard, but I feel that I understand myself better by having my study in Ulaval. On one hand, having my study in a foreign country means I must push myself to the limit. On the other hand, it is during this hard time of mine that I understood myself better with all the helps from my parents, my teacher and my friends. Now half semester has gone by and I feel I’ve improved myself in many ways with the help of David and Awa during our life balance analysis, I made myself to social, to spend more time on meeting new people. Thursday I have the result of midterm exam due and then it’s time to lock me up again and work hard! 

what I am grateful for by Awa Diallo

My mother, the best person in my life

This might sound cheesy but I am grateful for being alive, healthy and being able to have all my needs fulfilled, as well as my wants. But most of all, I am grateful for my mum. She raised me all by herself and she managed to take care of little brothers and sisters. She is the one that always encourages me to be the best at what I like to do, and she always taught me to respectful to anyone, no matter his situation, from the house maid to my boss. Additionally, she is the most positive and calm person I know; she would find positivity in every situation. Very spiritual and religious, she shows me that even in the current world, you can be kind and polite, and still succeed. Whenever I am lost in what I am doing, what I want for my future… she is the one that I call to put all into perspective. I am grateful to have here in my life, to have that mother that a lot of my friends envy me for. I am grateful for her health, and her being able to provide for me and my uncles and aunts; I am grateful for her kind heart and, most of all, for the 110% support she has been giving me for my whole life and still doing it.

I am grateful for my travel experience.

I am grateful to have had the opportunity to travel for my studies. After obtaining my high school degree in Senegal, I went to France where I lived for 3 years. It was not the best years of my life, but I learned a lot about people. Indeed, it was the first time I left my family to live in another country all by myself. That taught me how to socialise with people with different backgrounds, cultures, and very new and different personalities. I learned the hard way that people are not naturally nice, and they are afraid of the unknown. Therefore, I had to be open minded and understanding. On the other hand, the experience I had in France really showed me examples and ideas I can develop in my country.

After 3 years in France, I went to England were I stayed for nearly 4 years. This step is the one I am the most grateful for. I learned to speak fluent English, and developed my socialising skills. When in France I needed people not to be afraid and accept diversity, It was the contrary, the diversity there was scary. However, working and studying in such environment allowed me to deal with a lot of different personalities. I also had very challenging experiences as a team manager in a big retail store.

Right now, I am in Quebec where I am planning for staying at least 3 more years to get an MBA and get professional experience. I am grateful because I am sure of the good changes I will bring in my country when I go home.

David Demers’ Gratitude Journal

Saturday 15 May 2014

I am grateful for my family.  My wife is “a rock”, the one that everything revolves around.  She is able to juggle work and family life and is also able to progress toward her “other” goals in her religious life (likely to become a priest after retirement).  My son Lucas is a great kid.  He decided to go to French private secondary school after doing his primary schooling in English.  He is smart and articulate – if you can get him talking.  He is doing well at his new school.  He is enjoying being in the junior band (he plays the French Horn) and is looking forward to learning Spanish.  My daughter Sophie is a bundle of energy.  She likes swimming, dancing, singing, and she also had a lot of fun at her cheerleading day camp during her week off of school.  She is smart but not the same kind of “school smarts” that Lucas has.  To keep her interested in school when she gets to secondary school, we are going to have to find some sort of performing arts – study combination school to keep her motivated and enthused about school.  As my wife said, if Sophie could be at the “Glee” school on television, she would fit right in.  The big question will be what kind of school that she can get into when the time comes (she is only in Grade One).

Sunday 16 May 2014

Even though there are not a lot of us that go to church, the people that are there are very nice.  My wife is one of the Wardens at the church – she has been one for several years, and will be stepping down next year.  My daughter is very much a “free spirit”, during the hymns she goes to the back of the church and dances.  Both Lucas and Sophie especially love the “coffee time” at the end of the service, they get to drink juice and especially eat some cookies.  Sophie seems to be taking an interest in playing keyboards, she often asks the organist if she can play the organ a little bit at the end of the service during coffee time.  Both Lucas and Sophie are totally at home at Church on Sundays - they should be, they have been there (almost) since birth.

I am very lucky that I have found an activity that I very much like doing (my “flow” I guess), playing bridge.  I get to play once a week on Saturday afternoons.  When I am concentrating on a bridge hand then “everything else goes away” as it requires my total concentration.  It is a challenging game that never wears out as every deal is different.  I will never be a World Champion, but I do fairly well.  The aspect that I like is that it is a social game, not a solitary game like Chess.  I consider myself lucky to have found a game that can sometimes get me into “flow” concentration, and it allows me to “escape” any “downers” that might occur in my life.

Monday 17 May 2014

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!  Not very many ULaval students get into the St. Patrick’s Day spirit, I have yet to see anyone wearing green today, yet alone a St. Patrick’s Day T-Shirt.  I am a poor example as I did not wear anything green today.  I consider myself lucky that returning to University is working out fairly well for me.  When I found out that my position was cut at work it seemed pretty grim, but it has given me the opportunity to go back to get an MBA, something that was in the back of my mind for the last few years.  The fact that I have been coping fairly well with the course load and my results have been fairly good is promising.  You never know until you start whether things will work out alright, and so far I have been doing better than “just keeping my head above water”.  The fact that my “pension stuff” from my previous employment is working out well was also a very pleasant surprise.  Things could have been so much worse than they are.  I have a job interview coming up for full time summer employment (potentially continuing part-time in the fall), so with that and the “Journée Carrière FSA Laval” coming up I am optimistic that I will find gainful employment this summer.  I have reason to be cautiously optimistic regarding my short to medium term career prospects, which is a lot better than being pessimistic – University life is going pretty well so far.

Life-Balance Analysis- Reflection entry-Coach and Coachee, by Yuchen

I think that our coaching session of this week was       better than the last one. With Awa’s joining, our conversations became even more dynamic. From a coachee’s perspective, this coaching session was very instructive. This coaching session gave us a way to share our way of living, our experience of balanced or usually unbalanced life and finally analyze it. When I was being coached, I felt comfortable and relaxed to share my point of view towards the life-balance analysis, and my coach my coach shared his sharp observation and analysis of my current problems, for example, he asked me why I rated my Intellectual activities so low while I put so many time on study. To be honest, although I explained at the moment that this aspect was considered as emotional intelligence to me, I do realize now that it’s WRONG to put so less efforts on it because the more time I spend on it, the more skills I will have when coping with other activities.

My coach pointed out that my main stressor is actually my own problem with concentration; I was too easy to be distracted and therefore lost my focus. He also shared a very instructive method to help me get rid of the procrastination, he mentioned that if people can work or study in groups, they will have less chances to be distracted by gadgets, internet, etc.

I was actually stressed when I had to coach. It was very clear to me that the purpose and goal is to help coachee crystallize his or her stressors and provide some advises accordingly which requires me to reckon the 5 steps of coaching every second. My coaching is based on the life-balance analysis where I believe my coachee has a fairly balanced life although she’s facing some restrain factors, for example, she told me that she’s facing pressures from studies. Based on this acknowledge, I think my coachee knows exactly what her stressors are, and she has an interesting perspective on the nature of stress and the different aspects of life balance. On one hand, she felt demotivated by the uncertainty, the same feeling David had. On the other hand, she was supported by her family and friends, suggesting that her social resilience should be strong. Therefore, I focused on demonstrating that this powerful strength she had and how it could influence her life balance.

During the coaching process, I was able to practice the 5 steps of coaching. However I do find it's hard to apply the mirrowing part due to the quality of my questions. Had I ask the open questions that would attract my coachee's attention, that would help me allocate her problems? I'm concerning about this part, but nevertheless, I hope our conversation touched some points.

stress management reflective entry: coachee

My coach used the life balance analysis strategy to help me overcome my stress factors. I am under pressure with school, and I am not sure about my professional future, I am not sure whether I have chosen the good path in order to achieve my goals, and what is more stressful for me is the fear that I might have to stay abroad for a long time, away from my family and friends who are in Senegal.

After discussion, my coach showed me that I am, actually kind of successful in what I am doing, I do have good marks at school and I am not worried about getting a good degree. about the loneliness, I am living with friends and I always manage to go back every year to visit family and friends in Senegal. 

Also, there are so many free ways to communicate (viber , skype…) that I should not worry about people forgetting me.

Using the life balance strategy, I had already tried to come up with some solutions to overcome my stress factors. I started walking an hour and a half to come and go from school, which really helps me clear my mind. My coach also advised me to have a little more cultural activities that will help me concentrate on something else but future and career issues.x

stress management reflective entry (coach)

My coachee used the “small wins strategy” to try to overcome the stress he is under, mainly based on uncertainty about his professional future. Using the life balance analysis strategy, asked him questions that led me to the answer that he has a somehow balanced life. My coachee took a big decision by deciding to change his whole career, and know he is not sure whether he would get a good job over summer. Also, he said that he spend 90% of his time studying, which is not very healthy I think.

The good thing about him is that he has some ways of improving other aspects of his daily routine. For example, he does not go to the gym, but he walks an hour every day to go and come from university; although, he does not go out very much (to go to movies, or drinks with friends…), he plays card game that required a lot of concentration with friends. Those activities help him think about something different from university and career.

My advice was to invest more time on social activities, get new experiences that will help him forget about the stressing subjects. That way, he might even find solutions to his issues such as getting his team to work together for a good grade. Most of all, I tried to emphasize that he should not give up on anything that makes him stressed. He should consider them as life challenges he has to overcome with unstressful activities.

Stress management reflective entries (coachee and coach)

My session as Coachee (Small wins and life balance analysis)

For my session as coachee, although I submitted my text as “the small wins strategy”, my coach decided to coach me based on “life balance analysis”.  Within the “seven slices of the pie”, I was putting a lot of emphasis on the work and intellectual activities (university studies), while neglecting somewhat the cultural and social activities.  In order to help ensure that there is better balance in my life, my coach suggested a few possible activities.  Regarding my initial “stress” formulation using small wins, this corresponds well to taking breaks to avoid getting burned out and working inefficiently.

For my worries regarding my studies, my coach assured me that I was going the right way, that implicating myself proactively in term projects is the best way to: (1) reduce stress regarding uncertainty about the projects; (2) ensure that I will achieve the best results possible.  As for worries regarding finding summer work, my coach had no specific strategies in mind for me, although she encouraged me to be proactive and not wait until it was too late to try to find summer employment.

My session as Coach (life balance analysis)

My coachee submitted his text as “life balance analysis”, and I coached him based on that paradigm.  I expressed surprise when he suggested that he was “high” in the work slice while simultaneously being low in the intellectual activities slice.  My coachee replied that he considered intellectual activities to be exclusive of university studies.  My coachee expressed the fact that he felt a bit like his communication tools (surfing internet etc.) ruled him.  He stated that it was too easy to “take a little break” to surf or consult Facebook instead of working.  To contrast this, my coachee expressed the possibility of devoting an hour of “downtime” each day to concentrate on spiritual activities – he considered that a small step.  I replied that setting aside one hour was a huge step and congratulated him on his initiative.  I also stated that it need not be an hour, just so that he feels relaxed and refreshed at the end of each “downtime” session.

In addition to his “internet attraction”, my coachee also stated that he felt that he sometimes spent too much time in his room, in his “comfort zone”.  Another problem was his tendency to procrastinate on university assignments.  I suggested a possibility to “kill two birds with one stone”.  He could make “study dates” with classmates and work on assignments.  That would “get him out of his room” and also help him advance in his homework.  I did not mention it, but the fact that one is doing work cooperatively with other classmates is a great incentive not to procrastinate.  One does not want to arrive at the study date having done no work in advance, as the study partner(s) would feel as though they were being taken advantage of.  It is important to be a contributor of ideas within any study group.  Being part of a study group could reduce the “last minute” stress that he was sometimes experiencing.

Life balance analysis (by Awa DIALLO)

Causes of stress are numerous, and in the working environment, it is often caused by unqualified managers. Lewin (1951) suggested that stress can be considered as a force field where the restraining forces have more power than the driving forces.

Stress at work is mainly a consequence of a bad working environment. However, it can also come from a malaise felt at home, or from a personal uncomfortable feeling; when we have that inside feeling of failure somewhere. Stress does not always involve work, but also other aspects of our lives such as physical wellness, social belonging…

To build stronger driving forces in a stage of stress, one has to be able to balance his life by Improving the way he satisfies the need of other aspects of his life. Indeed, as said in the textbook, we often privilege some sides of our daily routine to the detriment of others. For example, we know that it would benefit our body and mind to do a bit exercise (take the stairs instead of the elevator) but we would not do it because we are lazy, or because there is too much work to do to think of exercising, and so on.

The life balancing analysis proposes a list of the different aspects of life that should play an important role in our social, mental and physical wellness. Then, considering the different aspect where we do not invest enough efforts, we make a list of the activities that should improve the way we take care of those aspects. The goal here is to not spend the whole following week without performing one of the activities that we listed before.

After performing the analysis of my day to day activities based on the life balance analysis tool, I realized that I do not perform enough physical activities. Also, even if I live far from my parents and most of my friends, I do not here from them as often as I should, and just a phone call to my best friend really influences my good mood. Usually, I professionally perform well when under pressure. But what stressed me is solitude. I knew that before but I was not really doing anything to work on it. This exercise really helped because I did almost everything I listed: I started walking 45 minutes instead of taking the bus to come to school, I contacted almost all my friend I did not have news from for almost a year and it all felt very good.

As a future manager, to reach conscious competence, I think I would need to use this tool as part of my daily routine. Indeed, it would allow me to know how to influence my performances at work by improving my “not work related” behavior. As a coach, I would suggest this methods to my clients as well, as it really gets you to analyse what is important for you, makes you think about what should be more important. Also, this method helps in determining how to improve your daily routine in order to reduce the risk of being overwhelmed by restraining forces.

Life-Balance Analysis by Yuchen

The figure below is my life-balance analysis form. The blue represents how much I time I feel I am satisfied or how much I have spent in each area. Consider that I am a full-time student, so I take the work activities in this form as study activities.

As you can see, the work activities and physical activities are my main focuses, followed by cultural activities and family activities. It’s true that I’m millions miles away from homeI’ve spent less time on social, spiritual and intellectual activities.

Things I can do to improve my development in areas that need it.

The spiritual activities were used to be labeled as unimportant and not urgent because I believed in looking forth and never stop. As a result, I spent most of my time on studying and working on my body and living with a pretty busy lifestyle, however I feel it could be more productive if I take some breaks and try the deep-relaxation strategy as mentioned on p.142 in Developing Management Skills which could help me recover from energy loses and unmotivated attitude caused by stresses.

Apart from the psychological buildup, there’s another issue on social aspect that must be solved: my terrible habit of passing the whole day in my room. I was so comfortable in my little comfort zone that I didn’t even want to meet new friends. Moreover, by surfing the internet for everything I needed, I don’t even have to move my feet. It’s pretty ironic that I bought myself a pair of trousers from la Maison Simons a few days ago, but it’s bought from their website instead of their offline store. In order to improve my development in social activities, I should go out and establish new social relationships which could provide opportunities to share one’s frustrations and disappointment, to receive suggestions and encouragement, and to experience emotional bonding (p.143). Perhaps I can start with participating in the activities organized by service de residence.

Things I should stop doing in order to achieve better life balance

The first thing I should stop doing is allowing technology to become my master. Internet and other gadgets are good servants and they were designed to make my life easier, not to rule it. Sometimes they also distract me from productive working, I will open a new browser and surf the internet for a few minutes while knowing that I must focus on my current work. Even though they are just a few minutes of distraction, I know this small loses would cut my thoughts and harm my productivity.

Another thing that should be stopped is the loafing, or procrastinating, to be more precisely. When I feel lack of motivation, I’ll just sit back and wait until the last minute to finish my work. Starting my works until the last two or three days before the deadline is the typical symptom of procrastination, it’ll put too much stress and eventually make people exhausted even have finished the work.

Things I’ll do to practice #2 and #3

I would like to start from today to set up an hour of internet-free time and use it to meditate or self reflect. The time looks quite short but I would like to start with this small win, and consistently doing this.

For my practice of get out and meet new friends, I am planning to visit the Montmorency Fall this week with some new faces, it would be an interesting journey for me and I might find it relaxing and helpful to reduce the stress.

The small wins strategy

The Small-Wins Strategy

What major stressor do you currently face?  My major stressor is uncertainty.  The uncertainty is in two areas, regarding my course-work for my MBA (will I be able to achieve good results in all my courses?), and regarding my ability to find rewarding work during the upcoming summer period and my future career.

What are the major attributes or components of the situation?  Regarding course-work, my major components are the term projects, in particular for marketing.  In fact, the only course where I feel confident that I will be able to succeed with no problems is GSO 6006.  Regarding finding a “stage” for the summer and future career prospects, it is challenging determining how to go about re-orienting my career.  I worry that employers will not consider me for employment as they consider that my 20+ years of employment “over-qualifies” me for any positions they may have available.

What are the subcomponents?  For GSO-6006, the course is all quantitative, and thus far I feel that I am mastering it well.

Attribute 1: For MNG-6133, my worry is that the quality of my work may not be sufficient in general.

Attribute 2: For CTB-6007, I am doing all right from week to week, but I have some concerns regarding the end of term project. 

Attribute 3: For MRK-6004, I have concerns about my capabilities as it is a “non-quantitative” course in French requiring a team term project, which makes for a lot of uncertainty about whether I can perform well enough. 

Attribute 4: As for finding work and future career prospects, my biggest initial concern is finding a full-time job for the summer months that will help direct me toward an interesting career – if the employer would like me to continue on a part time basis during the upcoming Fall and Winter terms, that would be a bonus.  I am not yet concerned about long term career prospects.

What actions can I take?  For MNG-6133, I will try my best during the individual and team work and “let the chips fall where they may”.  For CTB-6007, I will initiate getting together with team members to get started on the term team project.  For MRK-6004, I will actively search out what activities that I can perform in order to best contribute to the team term project.  For finding a summer job, I will enroll in SPUL services, I will ensure that my LinkedIn profile under FSA-MBA ULaval is the best possible, and I will look into other networking possibilities to give myself the best chance to find a good summer job.

What actions helped me best cope with previous similar stressful situations?  For course-work, my previous successful strategies were to spend the “week-off” from courses to get ahead on term assignments, and also to take breaks from school work.  After too many 10+ hour days in a row my productivity plummets, so occasionally clearing my mind by doing something unrelated helps me in the long term.  As for finding gainful summer employment, my last employment search was many years ago, so my memory fails me, I will just try to “get myself noticed” for potential job opportunities.

What small thing should I feel good about regarding previous coping strategies?  For course-work, getting ahead of things during the reading week worked well for me previously, so I think that I can make a good dent in end of session projects.  For finding employment, I will just try my best, I do not have any specific strategy in mind.

Coaching meeting reflective entry (David Demers)

• ·         The coaching meeting will be to discuss and develop your understanding of what a good coach is with your coach

As the coachee, I questioned my coach on a few points that I found interesting and even somewhat surprising in his “500 worder”.  The coach must create a conducive atmosphere, and he must also develop a good understanding of “where the coachee is” and where he is going.  Of course, the final destination is often not immediately in view, but the coach must provide direction and feasible objectives on the way there.  When there appear to be barriers, the coach must facilitate uncovering the root problems and provide tools to the coachee to help in overcoming the problems.

What surprised me about my coaching experience (as coach and coachee) was that the conversation went to areas that I never could have anticipated.  I suppose that it should not have been a surprise since a goal of coaching is self-discovery of hidden character flaws (skeleton in the closet).  That goal is to shine light on the bones to understand what is/was there and how to overcome them, to leave them behind.

The key to coaching success is that the coachee goes into the exercise in the right mind-set.  He must work hard to obtain success, so having a negative outlook on coaching will make success virtually impossible.  That being said, the role of the coach is not easy either.  The coach must, at least partially, “get into the head” of the coachee to understand his challenges and steer him toward solutions.  This is difficult enough when the coach and coachee share a common background, but it is even more difficult when they are different cultures or even different genders.  Some cultures may find it difficult to “open up” to their coach (a classmate).  Other people may find it difficult “to let down their guard” if a member of the diad or triad is of another gender.  One could say that our coaching is a professional interaction, but the information being shared could get quite personal and it is not always easy for certain people to “let down their guard”.  Especially if that person has been putting forth “a façade” for so long that they have almost lost touch with “the person underneath”.  There must be great trust in the process, it must be understood, even stated out loud, that coaching conversations are confidential – that “what is said in the room stays in the room” (my apologies to Las Vegas tourism commercials).

What is coaching (David Demers)

From our session one PowerPoint presentation, there are five key processes in coaching:

 (1) Listening
 (2) Mirroring
 (3) Summarizing
 (4) Questioning
 (5) Catalyzing

 These are all activities from the perspective of the coach. However, it is also important to consider the coachee perspective. The coaching process is meant to be “a voyage of self-discovery” for the coachee. In order to profit from this process, the coachee must approach the process with an open mind. The coaching process is meant to provide the coachee with deep insights into their mental processes. Frequently, this discovery process can uncover some “uncomfortable truths”. The goal for the coachee is to “better know themself” in order to change actions that are either self-destructive or have negative consequences during personal interactions. In order to facilitate the learning process, the coach must create an open and trusting environment. The coachee must know that facts that are uncovered will not be used against them. The goal is to uncover the underlying reasons for the coachee’s ‘sub-optimal’ actions so that the coachee can both reduce poor behaviours and increase productive ones. A frequent occurrence is that the coachee uncovers some “fundamental truths” regarding human interactions and applies these principles throughout their interactions, whether personal or job-related. It is often the case that the coachee will have an “A-HA” moment during the coaching process. The result may be that the coachee can then apply the principles and knowledge to their professional, personal and ‘recreational’ (PPR) lives. As an example, the coachee may be experiencing difficulties in one (or two) of the PPR areas, while the others “seem to be OK”. After the ‘a-ha’ moment, the coachee may understand the root causes of the difficulties in the problematic area, and the coachee may understand why problems had previously arisen in the PPR areas that “seemed to be going well”. The goal is for the coachee to experience “enlightenment” and to be able to apply their lessons learned to all aspects of their life. From the coach’s perspective, the goal is to guide the coachee’s journey of self-discovery. Listening, then mirroring and summarizing help to ensure that the coach understands the coachee’s ‘messages’. This re-formulation may result in the coachee thinking “I never really thought of it that way”. This “message reflection” and asking clarifying questions helps the coach to better understand “where the coachee is coming from”. This “deep analysis”, guided by the coach, is meant to aid the coachee to better understand the underlying reasons for their actions. This deeper level of comprehension by the coachee will, ideally, catalyze their personal discovery process. The coach’s role is to help the coachee to go further and to develop useful insights into their behaviour. The coachee will develop a better understanding of how to improve their behaviour to achieve better outcomes in all areas of their life. The most important member of the coaching team is the coachee. If the coachee does not “open up”, it is virtually impossible for the coach to achieve success. That being said, the coach must create an environment conducive to facilitate the coachee’s voyage of personal discovery. The role of coaching is one of being a facilitator, it is the coachee “who does the hard self-discovery work”.

 Note: ‘pour alléger le texte”, I used the “singular their” instead of his/her for possessive pronouns.