Synod Coaching
What is Coaching? Coaching is a powerful tool for clarifying what is most important in an individual or group’s pathway forward. It’s finding one’s own “life giving” sense of reality. Whether it’s about vision, purpose, or a relationship goal, coaching enables people to explore primary concerns, debride disputes, and find clarification. Resilience and problem-solving skills are familiar traits for every one of us. However, accessing such skills gets buried in the daily routines and emotional turmoils of life. Coaching is about deep listening, and helping individuals to understand themselves. Using insightful questions, a coach starts by encouraging individuals/groups to identify their own values and needs. Focused listening affirms a client’s own perceptions, and inspires their ability to see more.
A core perception within coaching holds that every human being has the answers to life’s dilemmas within themselves. Encouraging those self-perceptions opens the door to imagination. Using the metaphor of "looking around the corner", coaching expands someone's own insight and facilitates their ability to see beyond the immediate obstacle(s). Coaching makes a key difference by pushing perceptions from tunnel vision towards wider screen perspectives.
Have you ever found yourself stuck, flustered because an idea/vision has hit a brick wall? Coaching is a way to move forward. Coaching introduces a new set of eyes, ears, and perceptions. With insightful questions and keen listening, a coach encourages people to reimagine the process and/or revisit expected outcomes. The secret to coaching's success lies in the source of the solutions. The coach doesn't provide resolutions. A coach helps individuals find their own answers.
Call SWMN Synod Coaching to learn more about how coaching might support you in your ministry as a rostered leader or a congregation.
Written by Gene Alms, SWMN Synod Coach
SWMN Synod Coaches are offering our reflections on coaching over the next several months. We hope you will consider coaching as one of the valuable tools in our synod toolbox as we work together to support God’s mission and the health of the church in our corner of the world.
