Scott Jeffrey » Coaching

Wheel of Life

Scott Jeffrey — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 14:30:45 +0000

The “Wheel of Life” is an exercise conducted in many life-coaching programs because it’s a powerful diagnostic tool. The Wheel is based on the notion that there are specific categories or what I call Areas of Focus that form the cornerstone to your overall life experience. Although the name you give these Areas may differ, the Areas themselves are generally the same for each of us. They include:

Health: Your physical health and well being (can also include your emotional health).

Relationships: Includes your primary intimate relationship, family, and friends.

Social: Includes religious/spiritual communities and other group activities.

Financial: Your ability to manage your money effectively, save, budget, and grow your capital.

Professional/Business: This is your work category.

Personal Growth: Although not everyone might have an Area of Focus for personal growth and development, anyone interested in Self-Actualization does.

Spirituality: This can be its own category or simply the driving force behind all of your Areas of Focus.

These are the basic categories common to most. Additional categories might include Mental State, Creativity, Contribution, Lifestyle, Recreation, or anything else that might play a dominant role in your life.

After you’ve identified the major Areas of your life, the coach instructs you to visualize the Areas as pieces of a pie. The entire circle represents your overall life and each piece represents a different Area of Focus.

Here’s where it gets interesting: we all tend to have certain areas that we’re more proficient in and we all have a tendency to spend time in these Areas, neglecting our Areas of weakness. You may, for example, do an excellent job eating right, exercising, and staying active (your Health category), but you are horrible at living within your means, paying off your credit cards, saving for the future, and finding more ways to add value (your Financial category).

The Wheel of Life exercise brings these discrepancies to your conscious mind. If you’d like to try it on your own:

Identify the primary Areas of Focus in your life. You may use the list above to start.
Then, rank how you’re doing in each Area from 1 to 10, where 10 is excellent and achieving mastery, and 1 is you couldn’t be doing any worse.
Finally, determine two or three actions you can take to make improvements in the Areas that you’re weakest in (and ideally, do the same for all your Areas).

A fulfilling life is marked by a sense of balance and growth. The more effective you are in each of your Areas of Focus, the more life fulfillment you’ll experience. Even without the promise of greater fulfillment, the Wheel of Life can be very revealing: it can force you to examine your blind spots and own up to where you need to make major improvements to support yourself and your loved ones.

Next time, we’ll apply the Wheel of Life to your business.

How Coachable Are You?

Scott Jeffrey — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 10:00:31 +0000

Although technically not a word, coachability is one of the most important qualities you can have if you work in a team.

Teams with uncoachable players fail—plain and simple.

Here are seven sets of questions to help gauge your level of coachability:

Am I willing to learn? Am I willing to explore new ways of doing things? Am I a perpetual student of my field? Or do I take a this-is-how-we’ve-always-done-it stance?
Am I responsive? Do I respond to requests promptly? Or am I often aloof during meetings and in responding to emails?
Do I consistently follow through? Do I take immediate action in the decided direction? Do I get things done or at least wholeheartedly attempt to? Or do my constituents have to make repeated requests?
I am genuinely interested in what others are saying? Or am I just giving them lip service?
Do I demonstrate a high standard? Do my team members feel that I am genuinely doing my best? Or are they getting only a fraction of my attention and ability?
Am I willing to be part of a team? Or am I in it for personal glory?
Do I communicate clearly, honestly, and directly? Do I act in the interest of my team and the future of our business? Or do I play office politics and architect my words to achieve a specific reaction?

Answer these questions honestly to determine your coachability factor. So how coachable are you?

Seven Qualities of an Effective Coach

Scott Jeffrey — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 10:00:28 +0000

Star coaches run effective businesses and achieve tremendous results with their teams.

Now that we’ve explored the three powerful steps to coaching, let’s determine what effective coaches have in common.

1) A coach is a master question asker.

The key is to know the right question to ask at the right time. This takes practice, experience, patience and awareness. Always strive to ask more thoughtful questions of your team members and associates.

2) A coach is sensibly direct.

A coach doesn’t play office politics, crafting his words to elicit a particular response from his team member. In fact, office politics destroys teams. The coach is sensible, however, and uses discretion as needed.

3) A coach has sensory acuity.

A coach stays aware of his environment and those around him. He watches body language, tonality and other nonverbal forms of communication to better understand what others are saying.

4) A coach is a master listener.

An effective coach is highly empathic and intuitively connected to his team members. He listens intently—especially to what’s not being said.

5) A coach is inspirational.

Knowing that a business-as-usual attitude is an easy way to stifle creativity, a coach is constantly looking for ways to uplift his team. He provides moral support and is on the lookout for inspiring quotes, ideas and events—anything to raise the team’s spirit.

6) A coach challenges you.

There’s always room for growth and a coach is committed to facilitating your development. Instilling certainty of purpose, the effective coach provides meaningful direction.

7) A coach has high integrity.

Honesty, trustworthiness and integrity are the cornerstones of a coach’s state of being. Only after team members and associates trust and respect their coach (or leader) will major progress be achieved.

If you want to be an effective leader who brings your team to great achievements, you’ll examine these seven qualities very carefully and continually find areas for improvement.

Three Powerful Steps to Coaching

Scott Jeffrey — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 10:00:28 +0000

In the last post we reviewed tips to become a better mentor. Now, let’s look at coaching.

Every team leader of any project takes on the role of the coach. As with sports, the team with the best coach usually has the edge.

Coaching is an important responsibility of a leader. Compared to a mentor, a coach has greater accountability and provides more active, hands-on guidance along your professional journey.

Let’s review the three basic roles of the coach:

1) Take Inventory: Identify where your team is now.

A good coach lives by the dictum “Know thyself.” If you don’t know where you are, you can’t plot your course to any destination. What is your team’s current condition? What are your strengths? (Play to your strengths, not your weaknesses.) What’s the overall context of the competitive landscape?

2) Set Objectives: Determine where you want to go.

Obvious isn’t it? Yet frequently, this vital step is often overlooked. An effective coach spends a disproportionate amount of time clearly defining the end picture—what the project will look like at the end. A clear vision is paramount to leading a successful team.

3) Develop Strategy: Plot the optimal course to your end picture.

With the help of an experienced team, the coach crafts a pathway to success by identifying the key results and strategic actions that must take place in order to realize the ultimate vision determined in step 2.

Similar to mentoring, the better you are at coaching your team through these three steps, the more effective you will be and the greater the results you will achieve.