Coaching and Counseling
Coaching as an interactive and supervisory activity can be very challenging to handle. In most cases, people confuse coaching with counseling. While coaching aims at mentoring others into growth, counseling is aimed at helping a person or people deal with a personal problem that affects their social and behavioral approaches to life. Coaching can be conducted in a variety of settings including educational set-up and/ or professional context (Peter & Nick, 2013). It may also be conducted where one person has the objective of developing a particular skill in another individual. One major challenge in coaching is that it may eventually turn into a counseling session. For instance, when the target of the coaching asks questions which relate to certain personal problems that they may be experiencing, which hinder them from performing as effectively as they should be it in career or education, the session may turn into a counseling session.
Personally, I have had the opportunity to coach my siblings in their leadership skills. In some instances, the coaching sessions begun with sharing backgrounds and motivating leadership stories with them. While most of the coaching sessions experienced led to the realization of greater benefits, there were instances in which various challenges were met. Resistance to new information is one of the key challenges associated with the coaching process. Gallo (2015) describes some of the challenges of coaching including when the coachee is pessimistic about the entire process or lack of confidence in the employee. In a past coaching experience, I faced a really difficult situation when one of my siblings was particularly defensive. During that moment, I felt that I had done something wrong to deserve the negative comments I was receiving. At that moment, I felt really horrible but this feeling later dissipated as I learnt more about the process of coaching. I believe everyone can be a good coach as long as they have sufficient skills to transfer and are capable of using the right approaches to coaching.
References
Gallo, A. (2015). Overcoming the toughest common coaching challenges. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from hbr.org/2015/04/overcoming-the-toughest-common-coaching-challenges
Peter, H. and Nick, S. (2013). Coaching, mentoring and organizational consultancy: Supervision, skills and development. McGraw Hill Education. Retrieved from books.google.co.ke/books?id=9vAzfZyGrVYC&pg=PA184&lpg=PA184&dq=coaching+as+supervisory+skill+academic+articles&source=bl&ots=X2NAeSGHtD&sig=vQmnxVK4TZVfQyj8qhe_8jHhqw8&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=coaching%20as%20supervisory%20skill%20academic%20articles&f=false