Holding the Professional Self as a Coach

Professional coaching in organisational change and dealing with urgent dilemmas is somewhat challenging and not for the faint hearted. As a coach, you must be able to call on and maintain the professional self at all times.

The business world is fraught with risk, opportunities, threats and deadlines. Coaches are called in at those challenging times to partner with a coaching counterpart be it a leader or manager to assist him or her to manage proactively rather than to default to fighting back, digging your heels in or avoiding the behaviours necessary to complete on a situation.

Coaches are called in to support a leader or manager quite often when he or she is in this reactive state and he or she has to bring her own presence to the executive’s office in order to contribute well to the situation.

A coach is there to demonstrate maintaining centeredness and a healthy way of behaving and to resist being pulled in. She is to maintain her professional self vs contributing to the problem.

An effective way to do this is to

STRENGTHEN YOUR SIGNATURE PRESENCE

• Develop a healthy sense of resilience by staying in the moment.
• Stay focused on the intention that you have prepared.
• Stay centred during those stages of ambiguity.
• Observe from the balcony yours and the client’s responses.

Mastering these approaches is ongoing and takes time. When you can withstand the temptation to get caught up in outside forces then you develop a level of maturity where you can provide the space for yourself to breathe and observe then that will assist you to hold your professional self.