Coaching the Teens !

All caring parents want their children to grow up to be happy and successful adults.

Daughters who become good, strong women.

Sons who become good, strong men.

But making this happen is a Herculean task.

There was an article recently carried in Times of India , Mumbai Edition , dated 13th Nov 13 , “Need parenting help , call a coach”. When I went through the article I was reminded of a chat with a young kid, son of my friend, few months back. I carried out this conversation, which is typically of 10-15 minutes duration, in a coaching structure. What exactly is a coaching structure? Coaching is defined as “facilitate positive change through improved thinking”. Coaching is not about giving advice or solutions but about helping the person develop insights & then bring about new thinking and actions to achieve  results.

Well, as a parent (me included) we tend to believe that our children need answers, solutions and we go about “telling” our children what to do and how to do. Parents, generally, do not engage in a dialogue to understand them, understand their thinking process. This could be for a host of reasons. Parents believe that their own experience can be useful, that the child needs to be protected, and that they are just “kids”.

Well coming back to the article in Times of India, the writer talks about how there are these times when the parents need to learn the art of coaching & derive lessons on parenting. For the interested & initiated, I am reproducing the Face Book Chat conversation that I had with a teenager (17yrs). While reading through , I would like readers to carefully notice the response of the Teenager.

Coaching Conversation

Hello Uncle, How are you?

I am good, how about you?

I am good, thank you! Just struggling with studies these days?

Could you talk more about it?

That is the question of the hour. You please give me some tips to handle this struggle?

What is the question?

That, how can I overcome this struggle?

Question is "what is the struggle" you are facing.

Not able to concentrate on studies.

Which areas of studies you would like to improve your concentration?

You mean the subjects?

Yes, the subjects and topics within subjects.

Economics and Business.

What do you want to change about the way you understand these subjects?

No, I want to improve the duration of the self-study time of these subjects. I understand the subjects very easily.

So, your struggle is time and not concentration. Good, how do you schedule your day?

Well I have made a schedule.

Wonderful, so when you follow your schedule, how does it make you feel?

It makes me feel good and in control. I feel I will be highly successful.

Great, shall we discuss further on how you can work towards it.

Yes.

Thanks, would you share how you fare on your schedule?

Yes! I am trying, trying to follow it.

What could you do to ensure that you follow your schedule 100%?

Control Phone, TV& Friends

Who can help you to control TV, Friends & Phone?

No one,except me. I have to control it myself

Great, what all you can you do to manage your schedule and time better?

I guess my schedule is okay. I have to start saying no to the little things in life now to achieve big things. So the fault lies within me

Beautiful, No fault , you have realization now.

Yes, Thanks for making me realize it

So, what actions will you take now?

Will switch off the phone will studying?

Great, what else?

You tell me?

 

In your sport, is there any learning which you can apply when you are studying in concentration?

Well my sport requires great perfection & precision. So, yes that I can apply in my day to day working.

These 2; perfection and precision. How and what do you do to achieve them?

Practice hard and sometimes meditate.

How do you ensure you adhere to practice time?

By waking up early in the morning. I wake up at 5 whenever I have to practice.

So do u think it can work for you by applying this learning here

Yes I do. Thank a lot for telling this will really help me

So what action will you take now to ensure you are concentrated on studies

So now I am going to get up at 5. At 5 there are no distractions and secondly I am going to switch off my mobile phone while studying and thirdly I going to strictly follow my time table

What else can you do to ensure strict timetable adherence

I can ask my mother to keep a check on me

Great!

Thanks a lot for your guidance

Great let me know if you want to talk about same, 10-15 days from now after implementing the action.

Sure , I will.

In this conversation as you see my role was to guide him with my questions into finding his own way towards succeeding in achieving his goal. A similar issue handled by / as a parent could have meant that the child on raising the issue would have been “told” that he should get up early & switch off mobiles.

The conversation I had with the teenager differentiates itself just by the fact that all answers and solutions came from the child. There is a high probability of his achieving the outcome, as all actions came from his own thinking after the realisation that “he could think and do it all by himself”.

The secret is that no matter how hard it might be, parents need to start all interactions with their children with understandings and patience, even if you don't fully agree or even quite comprehend what they're talking about. We also need to take the emotionality out of the equation. Emotion is an obstacle 

when you're trying to get through to your teen. Remind yourself that what he says and does is not a reflection on you.

We do not want our kids to give up and quit when they face challenges. Focus on the behavior, and don't tag them with a label. Instead it's better to ask pointed questions to bring your child to a specific solution. Don't ask loaded questions that put your teen on the defensive like, "why can't you get up on time? What's wrong with you?" Instead, opening the conversation with, "Do you have any ideas for how you might get up on time?" If he can't think of any, suggest some options and let him chose what works best for him. Let him have the confidence that you believe in him and that you are not mad at him for struggling in his life. When you let him see the faith in his abilities and he has the space to work things out on his own, you will begin to develop true confidence in him.

The trick lies in guiding them to find their own calling. With teens, I think it’s best to remind them of things they themselves have said. To a certain degree, you’re allowing them to co–author certain things.

Coaches can help parents in developing skills to have “meaningful conversations” with their children. Coaches are available to have meaningful conversations with children to resolve their dilemmas and help them through challenges in any part of their lives. 

So as a parent, I think it’s important to know what your kid’s dilemmas and goals are. There is an opportunity here for child to understand himself better. Use these situations and dilemmas, because then you can use that as a tool to motivate them.

Happy coaching your kids.

Game Changer : Coaching leaders in small & Mid size organization!

Coaching is such a new phenomenon in Asia , that to all practical purposes, no one knows what it is. So at any given time less than 1 in 10,000 people are actually looking for a coach. 

(According to the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) , Organizations spend over $200 billion on training and development each year, and It's a widely held opinion within the training industry that between 50 and 90% of training is utterly wasted. Coaching is a much better solution to many situations.

Each year people spend hundreds of millions of dollars on books they never read and workshops whose content they quickly forget. Just look back at the library at home & you would find a self-help book adorning the shelves. Has it helped you change & improve? Not very likely. 

Many of the traditional approaches of imparting new knowledge do not translate into changes in behaviour. Coaching is a far more effective solution. Coaching engages the uniqueness of the individual. Coaching is an on-going relationship that raises awareness, connects the client with their passions and deepest desires and holds them accountable to get the results they want. People grow and change with a coach. Coaching doesn't just get results; it gets the most meaningful results. These results are in business, sales , revenues & even personal areas too.

In my journey as a Learning & development professional & as an Executive Coach in past 3-4 years, I have noticed a clear trend in Indian companies. 

1.  The Major IT companies use coaches (Internal and external) extensively for working with their technical leaders who to be effective & aligned to their client needs, need to develop social & emotional skills as well communication style.

2.     There are these large Indian companies who have built academies to nurture and grow their talent and retain them. Each Year the cost of hiring new talent is growing. These companies have used coaching “ as a perk” to groom their high potentials and also make their leaders move from “ good to great”

3.     Then there are some companies who get funded / PE investments from abroad. Since Coaching is quite prevalent in US/UK, these companies insist on talent development and therefore coaching is introduced by them as a tool for achieving desired new behaviours.

It may be debatable to say but let me hazard saying that these companies could well do without coaching. They can still get the desired results with traditional ways of people development. Some may argue that these organizations can afford it. My counter argument is that while they can afford it, they very well could do without it too.

Let us see now whether coaching could help the smaller companies, owner/promoter driven listed & non listed companies in meeting their challenges like:

a.      Hiring best talent. Small organizations can either not afford them or this talent is not willing to move to either company and / or the city

b.      Old loyalists. They have served well over the years but in this age of competition and innovation they are unable to change and in fact resist and dissuade and drive away new talent. Some promoters even share that these old loyalists do not recruit teams who are better than them, fearing a challenge to them.

c.    Leadership behaviors at workplace continue to be hands-on driving away talent who would like to have freedom along with accountability

d.      Promoter’s family members joining the business. Generally these are youngsters and need to be up & running quickly. However they are put under some mentors where because of proximity to power, their mentors tend to be soft. They are unable to manage their way through, unless they come with great education. In fact even those from promoter’s family who come with Engg. / MBA degrees from rated colleges do get frustrated with organization culture and people (b & c above).

Large organizations with deep pockets create systems and processes in people management space which smaller companies cannot afford. These systems are best in talent acquisition, management and development. They understand people quality impact top & bottom line.

The argument for smaller companies is therefore that even in absence of best & bench-marked systems you would do well to address some of the challenges that I talked about earlier. These are addressable without elaborate investments in HR automation. All you need are expert coaches who have the ability to identify the solutions holistically including some bit of support training for change management but mostly to work with each of senior leaders to help them develop new behaviours aligned to expectations and market requirements. The Coaches must be selected carefully. I say this because there could be a tendency to hire an old senior retired employee. While they may be good, they are not coaches who are specially trained and certified to work with people & help them move from where they are to where they want to be or their organizations desire them to be.

It is an idea worth exploring by the smaller companies who should never spend a single rupee without seeking to know the return.Coaching is the only tool whose impact can be measured. Perhaps the only people development tool to help you calculate the return on investment. Is that not what matters?