Why we believe everyone should do coach training

Do you live your life in consistent reaction to circumstances, where every day is a repeat of the day before and you long to find a way to break free and create some real changes but you just don’t know how? If this is you, maybe coach training is for you.

When I think about coach training (the STAR Coach Training Programme), it’s about embarking on a journey that facilitates deep self-discovery. Self-awareness enables us to see the world and ourselves differently. With increased self-awareness you can start to notice the impact you have on others, not only the impact they have on you. You start to recognise the patterns that keep playing out in your life and develop a desire to figure out what is driving them. It gives you excitement and energy to develop yourself.

The self-development part is clear, it’s exciting and empowering no matter where you are in your life. But why develop the skills to coach?

How many of you have read endless self-empowerment books or attended personal development workshops. Maybe your company has offered leadership programmes or emotional intelligence sessions and you leave inspired and so energised and you can’t wait to share it with everyone and apply it in your life and then – boom, the next day, you are back on autopilot, waking up the same way you did the day before and back into the same routine I spoke about earlier? This is because you have years and years of practice doing, thinking and being one way and a short course is just not sufficient to change that. To have the kind of change you would like to see requires discipline and a whole new way of thinking.

Consider the wise words of Albert Einstein: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them”. So how do you get a new way of thinking? The same way you would get a six-pack, you need to go to the gym, the mental gym. When you learn to coach, it forces you to break all the default thinking patterns you have. 

In a coach-mindset you believe the answers lie with the person trying to solve the challenge and not with yourself as the coach. You know the value of silence and giving a person time to think. You can comfortably be with emotions and not need to rescue or fix the situation.

In our normal mindset we believe we need to provide the answers when someone asks for help. Most people find silence in a conversation awkward and feel the need to fill it quickly and, when someone expresses emotions, we panic.

Creating change takes time and it can be one of the most rewarding, exciting, challenging experiences in your life. The more self-aware you are, the freer you are to be yourself, the more empathy and compassion you will have, the more comfortable you will be in your own skin. This is what we are about. Helping people be real, be true, be you.

For more information on our service offering and how you can start your journey with STAR Leadership, visit our website at www.starleadership.co.za or contact us at [email protected].