Topic: The role of Self knowledge in coaching Type: Research PaperSubject: EducationPages: 15 , Double Spacing (275 words/page)Academic level: MasterSources: 25Style: HarvardOrder Description i have a

Introduction

This paper is intended to explore the role of self-knowledge in coaching; it is often the case that the coach works to improve the self-knowledge of the coaches in order to achieve goals. This paper looks at the self-knowledge of the coach, how it is gathered and how a coach’s self-knowledge is used within the coaching context to inform their coaching practice.

Coaching is a relatively new concept and the research on the coach is lacking in comparison to research around therapies and teaching. Coaching is being more widely accepted as tool for corporations and as a career path for individuals wishing to help others achieve their goals. (Whitmore 1992) identified the role of the coach was to support the coaches to achieve maximum potential.

Coaching has been seen in the sporting world for decades and is an accepted as an effective support constructs to help athletes develop skills and knowledge to achieve peak performance. Coaching is being embraced by managers, executives, and corporations, there is life coaching, wellbeing and wellness coaching, mind-set coaching, parenting coaching, and its reach is huge across both professional and personal lives and therein lays the challenge for clearly defining coaching. Self-awareness or rather self-knowledge is the state of conscious perception of a person’s feeling emotions motivations and the behaviour. In the context of coaching the self-knowledge tend to be the first step to ensure understanding of the emotional intelligence in not only the person acting as coach but also in others. The power to understand the subsections o the emotion intelligence allows the coach to know areas he or she needs to work on to master and become complete coach. Therefore it is critical that every coach need to strive to ensure that he /she achieve high degree of self-aware. This is only possible the act of regular practice and thus can help identify areas that need improvement as a coach.

Therefore in general self-acknowledgement is the ability for doing the introspection and recognizing oneself as whole and knowing what you want. When it comes to coaching self-awareness include the act of knowing owns needs habits and the desires. Therefore as a coach there are several ways on how to know the level of self-awareness he/she is; some of the questions that one can ask himself or herself include; how often he/she listens to others during the conversation? How one can allow or ask other people to feel about the situation? Among other questions. If the answers are YES, Therefore that individual is likely to be self-aware.

The International Sports Coaching Framework recognises that although there are commonalities in coaching accept that the unique abilities and experiences of coaches influence their coaching practice. There are sevral measures that coaches can understand themselves and how they relate with their clients. This include the emotional intelligence and the self-acknowledgment.this is important through their act of understandingrational and irrational nature of the human beings.

Many of the professional coaches have employed several strategies which aid in cultivation of the self-awareness and improve the effectiveness of working in human being especially coaches. In the world of coaches welf-awareness tend to involve a variety of aspects surrounding self, personal traits, behaviours and ones feeling. This aspects play acritical role in ensuring effective understanding of onself and guide on the how coaches can relate with others either personally or professionally.

According to psychologist Daniel Goleman, self-acknowledgement is the main key aspect when it comes to emotional intelligence. Other psychologists havestated the fact that when one focus their attention to oneself, they will be in a great position to evaluate and do comparison on their behaviour which most at times affect the internal standards and values. This act will aid in taming the behaviour and character of an individual thus encouraging goodrelationship with people. Most definitions from the psychologists perspective have their emphasis on the ability to monitor their inner world, emotions and thoughts.

Among coaches the self-acknowledgement is not only about what they notice about themselves but also how they can ecognise and monitor their inner world behaviours. Since coaches are also leader in the sense that they lead other people, self-awareness is of great importance in their daily activities especially in workplace. When coaches have self awareness they tend to develop strong confidents and to be open- minded.. the character of self-acknowledgemnt helps in embracing new ideas and thoughts. Coaches with self awareness have the power to accept other people they relate with in their day to day activities and also accept their shortcomings and thus they are willing to engage their all mimnds and effortsin activities that will help them.

This not only contribute to the development of the coach skills but also develop their carrer to grow better. Some of the coaching practices that will improve the self-acknowledgemnt include;

Take a personality test: Personality tests give you insights into who you really are and help you to better understand why you behave the way you do. They also provide guidance for changes that you can make to better yourself at work.
Ask for informal feedback: One of the simplest techniques in coaching is reflection – simply repeating back to the client, in their exact words or very similar, what they have just said to you. In the same way, insights from your colleagues help you gauge how others see you. Also solicit feedback from family and friends for the same reasons.
Journal: Writing a daily diary will help you keep track of your thoughts, feelings and experiences.
Meditate: Mindfulness-based meditation will improve your awareness at a specific moment in time. It is a way to monitor your thoughts and feelings.
Reflect: At the end of each day, take time to consider how the day went. Reflecting allows you to course correct if you need to.

Becoming a more self-aware person helps you to become a better leader, even if you are only leading yourself.

Interested in learning more about coaching, and the techniques used by professional coaches to help people harness their true potential? You may wish to study coaching at SACAP. Programmes such as the Postgraduate Diploma in Coaching and the Coach Practitioner Program will equip you with both theory and practical skills needed to pursue a career in coaching. For more information, enquire now.

There are a variety of coaching definitions, the international coaching community (ICC) proposes the essence of coaching is to facilitate change, supports development at every level, building awareness of choice in the facilitation of change. The overarching definition from the ICC focuses on unlocking potential through learning rather than teaching. (Whitmore 1992) concurs that coaching extends the coacher’s skills, knowledge and capabilities to help them reach their true possibility.

Coaching definitions

First we must understand the definition of self-knowledge before we understand the role of self-knowledge in coaching. Definitions of self-knowledge fall into two theoretical areas, philosophy and psychology, any definitions within the coaching realm focus on knowledge rather than self

The aim of the research was to gain clarity around coach’s perceptions of the role of self-knowledge in coaching. The participants were from a variety of coaching backgrounds including executive coaching, life coaching, parenting, coaching, wellbeing coaching, mind-set coaching, sports coaching including athletics, swimming, rugby and netball, NLP coaching and educational coaching.

Ten questions (appendix one) were asked to five interviewees and twenty seven coaches were invited to partake in a survey using the same questions. It was considered to ascertain whether the interviewees answers would highlight commonalities and ask the opinion of the survey participants as their agreement or disagreement of the commonalities, however as no commonalities were identified it was decided to use the same questions in search for common beliefs and thoughts on the role of self-knowledge in coaching(Ellison, & Hayes, 2009) The questions. Control group 5 coaches face to face, 20 filled in a survey of the same questions – the questions were kept the same so as to decipher any trends in language and understanding.

Literature review

Psychological view of self-knowledge

The psychology of self-knowledge has been shown to lead in the way of making integral development in an individual and thus aid in personal recognition. When this is applied to our daily lives, it has been proved that the discovery of authentic internal universe aid in guiding an individual to a bright and fruitful future Coaches are expected to by any chance thing may appear negative is majorly due to the felt self-discipline which is the key required to give energy and not to mislead (Schwartz et al., 2004).

Psychology in a self-knowledge view directs to the oneself knowledge and general radical revolution or change in an individual. Self-knowledge is the fundamental component of life. Therefore to ensure gradual personal growth and the achievement of the internal advancement, it is important for a coach to continually practice. It is good to live an satisfactory psychology, it bringds the reflection on what one thinks about, feel or do to be able to understand himself or herself so as to grow poaitively. The psychology self-awareness is intended to regenerate ones internal condition.

The main key of the psychology of self-knowledge is the practice geared towards natural solution to all traumas, complexes, aversions, phobias and other psychological defects which can tend cause a lot of damage and affect the performance of an individual. Competent coaches usually go through a tough job. It is easily to connect to the person you happen to coach. Self-awareness helps the coaches with a right view of the trainee feelings every time hence a clear knowledge of their response and reaction. The psychology involving self-knowledge is the genuine method that has been tested and proved to aid in helping coaches improve their performance. Self-knowledge influences variety of the psychological processes which are important in the activities carried out by the coaches.

Philosophical view of self-knowledge

In philosophy the term self-knowledge falls into two categories in terms of meanings. It can be termed as the knowledge of individuals mental state or the knowledge of the own nature. To know the self-knowledge level in this sense one need to be aware or informed of the sensation, experiences and the propositional beliefs. Philosophers due to disagreement have endorsed various ways in which an individual can acquire the self-knowledge. Some of this ways include the inner observation or rather the self-scanning act that bring positive or participate in usefully activities so as to bring solution to the existing challenges to ensure the division is greatly reduced That coaches intention is not to bring the differences among his people but to ensure all the human being practice love and care to each a and every human being.. Then what to follow is the written that exists within the movement to a very large extend and not through anyone who recognizes the genuineness and the often and the thing of great criticism. Secondly is the acquisition of the self-knowledge through inference or self-explanation. Also the self-acknowledgement can also be acquired through the act of answering the relevant questions about the general nature of aspects without any form of bias.

Further philosophers also have stated that the self-acknowledgement can be acquired through the process of employing the necessary epistemic procedure but the nature of the self-knowledge can be considered fundamentally epistemological. Some of the no epistemological procedures that also can be used include the expression and constitutivism.

Policies that improves Self-Awareness in Coaching

Coaches should give the significance of self-awareness to each and every trainee, the urge for tangible and real response to requirements of self-awareness.
Individual should be taught on how to partake feedback from their coaches direct and their colleagues as well.
Coaches should ensure utilization of the tools that improves self-awareness. For example, personality test, strength finder etc.
Coaches should encourage a better realization of an individual role in the team and to the other mates.
Embracing new ideas from other stakeholders, superiors and clients which make everyone to feel being a part of the team.
Having projects that boost their skills and help them to develop their career.
The overall team should be ready to accept the weaknesses of their fellow members and be willing to assist them develop.

Issues affecting career coaching

Change from the popular field where an individual is well fit at making it difficult for them to adapt to the new field.
Lack of employment
Failure to implement radicle changes for better performance of the organization makes individuals feel insecure of losing their job hence search for a more stable organization.
Failure of protocols by superiors to encourage employees and recognize their effort to making the progress of the organization a success.

Emotional self-awareness

This makes the learners connect both their interactions and usefulness with others. Self-awareness emotion development is a basic key in operational leadership as it makes the footstep on which social and emotional intelligence are laid.

You cannot exploit skills such as empathy, team work or self-control without realizing how influential both your behaviours and thinking they are.

Study to determine presence of social intelligence and emotional awareness

A study was conducted in University of Pennsylvania to determine the social intelligence and emotional awareness linked capabilities to add leadership - Daniel Goleman 2009).

The study involved 42 participants who came from 11 countries. The study highlighted use of Daniel Goleman ESCI together with Richard Boyatzis model.

Observations

The participants allied developed emotional self-awareness with some positive variations.

It showed that leadership effectiveness improvements can be gotten easily and successfully through involving official mindfulness training.

The corresponding relationship assists the leaders with identification of behavioural requirements for each and every situation, strengthening their capability used to determine the effective behaviours.

The logical foundation for this advancement is claimed to be repetitive neural networks activation by preparing the developed self-observation skills. Research shows that alterations can enhance improved ability to activate brain regions that are associated with more and high operative situational stress. Adaptability and stress response through neuroplasticity can also be activated.

Many brain regions are connected to capacity of unique emotional intelligence abilities. The task used at improving emotional self-awareness is conducted by observing yourself while talking with other people actively.

This refers to reactions to both nonverbal and verbal communication and how influential they are to your reactions. This awareness enhances self-control emotionally. Improved self-awareness helps you understand better the rise of emotions as well as recognizing them.

On top of that, surrendering a schedule made by a competent guide, one may exploit emotional self-awareness being assisted by trainers who knows well this development while using responses and feedback like regular 360 throughout the effort guidance.

The Significance of self-awareness to the coaches can be can be outlined by intellectual knowledge and emotional intelligence. Intellectual knowledge refers to intelligence of understanding various situations while emotional intelligence refers to understanding and having an awareness of yourself and who you are, the things that makes not only you happy but also other people of the community.

In one hand, Intellectual knowledge (IQ) is essential as it links time performance correctly at rate of 20%. On the other hand, emotional intelligence (EQ) links performance accurately to the time at a rate of 70%.

After the study, the conclusion indicated and showed that the salary rises annually within increase of emotional intelligence. Therefore emotional intelligence is very crucial and essential in improving the relationship among all the concerned stakeholders(de Haan2012).

Coaching development ways

Competent coaches usually go through a tough job. It is easily to connect to the person you happen to coach. Self-awareness helps the coaches with a right view of the trainee feelings every time hence a clear knowledge of their response and reaction (Zinn, ).

As a coach, possessing this knowledge not only do allows to elevating relationship building but also informs them on various situations concerning their trainees.

Self-awareness development rules

There are some guidelines used to develop the self-awareness. These rules allow trainees to feel being part of the team hence providing the coaches with coaching skills. Some of these rules include:-

Quick belonging evasion
Emotions resonance
Visceral perspective
Emotional triggers understanding

Quick labelling

This is common in many people as they make quick judgments. You should therefore avoid being too much excited for some things; avoid making and passing decision of something being either bad or good without even taking some time to think of it.

Having this kind of feeling that something is negative or positive without first considering its origin and background is not recommendable. It is therefore good to first explore something rather than regarding it as either good or bad (Drake,2014)

Emotions Resonance

Generally feelings and emotions do come and disappear. Emotional resonance is the significances left after the feelings disappear. It’s good to realize this and make your feelings not hinder you from achieving much from the coaching staffs (Schwartz,2015). When you fail to understand that emotions come and go, you may find yourself neither progressing nor improving as you will spend much time thinking and trying to cope with your feeling.

Visceral Perspective

These are the ways in which emotions manifests itself in people. Emotions have got a noticeable revealing i.e. it is easily recognized when you have got a certain feeling or emotion towards something. It is therefore good to understand your feelings and how they appear as you can’t deal with them without realizing their source. For example, in some people, stress creates tension in someone’s whole body, increases the rate of your heart or raises your respiratory level and speed.

Various interests can make someone start behaving in an awkward way and perform some strange acts like sitting forward in the room whereas used to sit in the back. Understanding of the responses your body makes regarding several emotions makes a person aware hence improving his level of self-awareness.

Understanding your emotional triggers

It’s a crucial and important thing to learning to understand not only your own feelings but as well as those of other people. When you fail to realize the various things, acts and doings that annoy someone, you will live a victim of suffering. Once you understand the cause of bad emotional impacts it is easier to try avoiding it.

For example, some people tend to over react when abusing even in the very small and popular words like chicken, statements that may even seem less abusive to you. This makes someone realize that his reaction may be different other people yet of the same source.

My own definition

The term self-knowledge in this instance is based on a holistic view of the individual. A multidimensional knowledge of self, including thoughts, perception, cognition, behaviour, values, personality, the unknown, weakness, self-efficacy, learning style, strengths, beliefs, level of self-esteem, communication skills, skills, abilities, reaction and responses, wellbeing, mental health, physical health and sexual health, goals, dreams aspirations, judgments, bias coping strategies, reflection and learning, development, understanding, comfort zone, self-regulation, self-management, emotional impact, Life experience, motives, motivations,

Gaps in the research for self-knowledge in coaching – what is the current research, are there any definitions?

Research findings

Coach perception of self-knowledge is unclear, when the direct question was asked “What does self-Knowledge mean to you?’ answers were inconsistent throughout the thirty two participants. One opinion that was repeated several times but remains in the minority was “what makes you tick” a generalisation which lacks a demonstration of true understanding of self-knowledge. However, further questions probed and a fuller understanding of self-knowledge became a little more defined, although we did not achieve one definition (Malloy, 2014). There was a distinct lack of common words used

Words used in the minority

Participant claim that qualifications and training help coach develop self-knowledge

Experience, reflection, self-study, peer learning, the term self-awareness seemed more comfortable fit for the understanding of participants. Participants are aware of effective coaching methods which reflects the research and coach training available – how to coach, managing coaching outcomes, know the process

For coaching to be effective the coach should be in a position to understand the subsections of the emotional intelligence since this allows the individual coach to be aware of the areas that needs more efforts so as to be complete coach. Self-awareness or rather self-knowledge is the state of conscious perception of a person’s feeling emotions motivations and the behavior. In the context of coaching the self-knowledge tend to be the first step to ensure understanding of the emotional intelligence in not only the person acting as coach but also in others. Therefore it is critical that every coach need to strive to ensure that he /she achieve high degree of self-aware. This is only possible the act of regular practice and thus can help identify areas that need improvement as a coach.

Developing self-knowledge in coaching

There are several factor that promote development of self-knowledge in coaching. Some of this aspect includes paying attention. This is a great step in understanding oneself better and it involves observation and being keen on thoughts feeling and the behaviours. Coaching using this aspect develops automatically as a result of mind-set being adaptive to the situation at hand.

Secondly are being aware min things more than just strengths and weaknesses. Most of the coaches should assess the reasons for their performance since it aids them to be aware of weakness and strength. This also guides in the analysis of S.W.O.T which can aid in training and doing follow-ups so as to enable the coaches to use the strength and find solutions to overcome the weakness.

In addition the core belief and values help in development of self-acknowledgement. This will help them not only understand importance of self-awareness but also aid in reminding of the reason they are taking part in their coaching professionalism. Coaches also can utilize the same techniques to encourage some degree of self-awareness in ongoing reflection. This will not only aid the understand and to regulate their own feelings emotions and behaviors.

The connection between the self-knowledge and individualism

Psychologists and the philosophers have shown long history of concern with self-knowledge. According to Withmore (2015) the act of knowing oneself is the beginning of all the wisdom. Psychologists have utilized the individualistic approach in expressing the power of self-knowledge in individual. According to individualism the civilization came as an intrusion and emphasize of bonds, commitments and to self-control. For instance the psychology movement which is rooted to individualistic presupposition.

Leadership development in all spheres such as coaching among other professionals have the self-acknowledgment play a critical part in introspection and self-regulated positive behaviors that tend to foster self-development and the entire well-being of an individual. Therefore the more self-control in an individual the more the entire group benefits and thus this is the key to success in all professionalism.

Conclusion

The role of self-knowledge in coaching

Self-awareness in coaching allows an individual to be open and think in different angles before making the decision. These aids in making the right decisions that will be void to biasness and that will not offend any individual. When one is in professional coaching there are several aspects that they harness to determine their true potentials and this encompasses the strategies one employ. According to the interview carried out most of them stated that self-awareness can be cultivated.

Emotional Intelligence (EI) and Self-Awareness (SA)

On one hand, self-awareness is a sentient discernment of someone’s behaviors. It also refers to the knowledge to realize the abilities and disabilities of a person. Self-awareness helps coaches to perfect their week points as they realize what trainee requires.

On the other hand, Emotional Intelligence (EI) mainly reflects on the capability of coaches to read and manage the trainee feelings as well as their own feelings. It is self-realization of who you are, your duties and what you are supposed to do either for you of for someone else. One fundamental virtue of a coach is to have a good relationship with his trainees. A coach should be ready to assist, understand a student’s mind and instruct them accordingly. -Catherine Baker)

Functions of self-awareness in coaching

This knowledge of maintaining healthy relationship between the coaches and the trainees has got many positive impacts like:-

Self-knowledge helps the coaches to realize the various facets of emotional intelligence of other people as well as theirs.

Helps improve cohesion but also equips the learner with advanced mind sequence during training

With self-awareness, coaches are able even to attract more trainees to their field as there is free and a sense of freedom among the trainees.

Self-awareness gives both the learner and the coach with an understanding of one another, improving and strengthening the bond between them.

Emotional knowledge helps the person to realize the fields where he needs to put more effort and to work on in order to transform and improve. It also helps in realizing the areas and things which ought to be quite in order to achieve better results, For example, a player using hard drugs to boost his nervous system.

A good coach never tires looking for clues and new ways of advancing his team better. Also to the senior players it is good for them to learn assist the coach in inducting knowledge to the juniors which helps them to improve. “To know you is to study yourself with one another- Bruce Lee 2001).

Emotional intelligence helps coach to note his limits, gauge and level at which he will reach the learner. Emotional Intelligence can be broken down into four main categories namely which are then expanded to extract a clear understanding. These four categories include:-

Self-control
Well being
Sociability
Emotionality

Self-control

In any field, it is always advisable to have a second thought before doing something; coaches must learn to control their emotions and feeling regardless how strange the situation is. This helps avoid much or serious and negative effects that may result harming one another. For example, coach hitting the learner for failing to adhere to the instructions his instructions.

Well-being

Mainly focuses on the mood of the coach i.e. happiness or dullness which is like a way to check how determined a person is. For example a good coach should always be happy for him to be able to render effective session to his students. A coach should possess indomitable spirit and desire of wanting to achieve more every time. This is brought up by high self-esteem.

Sociability

The most essential and highly effective character of every coach is the ability to change the mind of a learner positively. A times comes when you are exhausted, tired and feel like giving up on training and on this time, you need a mentor who not only instructs you on what to do but also express his will to stand by you, give you all the support to exploit the full potential in you. Cox, (2011) states good coach is the one who understands that even he himself was at the stage his learner is at, therefore should show understanding to the learner and encourage them not to give up. This helps the learner to feel confident and aspire to achieve more in every session.

Therefore the self-acknowledgement is so important in that it helps in various areas such as helping professional coaches to take coaching into another level and ensure the good behavior and ethical character as whole.

The gaps noted in the research is that there was low awareness about ways in which coaches can be guided on their realization and strategies that can aid them adopt an improve in their professional activities. This gaps can be dealt with if the coaches can adopt the documented strategies to gauge themselves on their levels of performances. In addition development of coaching centers to train coaches on their need and importance of self-acknowledgement which will translate to better coaching practices.

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