|
Becoming The Coaching Parent
by David Miskimin
I suspect many readers will be parents - I know all readers were once children! So if we want to help children to grow into fully functioning, resourceful adults, where might we start?
Indeed, if we as an adult want to enhance our performance in work or as a parent, is there still hope? Experience shows that by far the most successful people have a desire for personal growth in their lives. They are also likely to have benefited from a role model, either personally or followed through books, cassettes, videos, TV or some other media.
A combination like this often results in personal mastery. In practice we cannot help others effectively until we have become good at growing and helping ourselves.
It may be helpful to clarify some terms. Personal mastery is about the pursuit of excellence, wanting to be really good at something, maybe even be the best. Coaching is about providing assistance to an individual or team in ways that will challenge, stimulate and guide in order to facilitate growth. It's essentially a conversation, where listening and questioning are used in such a way as to aid the individual to correct their own behaviour, generate their own questions and ultimately find their own answers.
Mentoring means doing all the coaching things, plus contributing some wisdom gained through your own life experience. Inspiring, literally meaning 'to breathe the spirit into', you might sense how you will lift others by the quality of your example.
This path might be shown as below:
Inspiring
Mentoring
Coaching
Personal Mastery
What does this mean for parenting you might ask? Well you won't be a role model for children, until you become one that inspires them!
Can you imagine modeling yourself on someone you do not like, respect or admire? It doesn't happen does it? In addition, we know that there is no way we can fool children into believing we are something that we are not - they are the experts in spotting demonstrations of "do as I say, not as I do..."! They might initially think you are great - they soon spot if you are not. So if we are to successfully coach anyone and particularly children who don't miss a trick, we need to walk our talk and make it a good one. Then they will want to close the gap between where they are and where we are.
So what practical things might we do to influence with integrity? A good starting point is to remember that children are good teachers for us as they are simply being themselves and are focused on the now. Reflect on what Christ meant, perhaps the greatest ever leadership role model, when saying we needed to become as little children ourselves in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. That's why our approach needs to be with an open heart, humility, love and honesty. Isn't that what children can teach us - perhaps remind us about?
Although we know that genes play an important part in our lives, don't fall into the trap of science and believe that because our relatives didn't succeed, we won't either. Help build strong self-belief in the child and the evolving adult will be prepared for the inevitable success that comes along.
Even when results are less than hoped for, as on occasion they will be, a firm grounding in resilience will assist the recovery. To help kids to cope with adversity, set a good example. The trouble-free childhood doesn't exist. If you fly apart in a crisis, or become hopeless or enraged when things go wrong, how might the child respond? I'm not advocating denial, more that we choose our attitude and our response. As Charles Swindoll said ' I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it'.
Help children to learn to relax. Our thoughts drive our behaviour and emotions, so we should help them understand how much more resourceful it can be to turn sad thoughts and feeling into happier calmer thoughts and feelings.
My favourite is to ask at bedtime, 'What have you most enjoyed about today?' When you have that information follow up with an even more empowering question, '…and what are you most looking forward to about tomorrow?' Drifting off to sleep in this positive frame of mind also results in a far more enthusiastic start to the following morning. Try it on yourself too, before the next busy day and bring back the child in you - the one that in truth has never really gone away, has it?
David Miskimin is CEO of The Directors Coach and co-author of: The Coaching Parent: Help Your Children Realise Their Potential by Becoming Their Personal Success Coach
(c) David Miskimin. All Rights Reserved.
|
