Sunday, 23 March 2014

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.


No comments:

Post a Comment