Unless you are challenged how do you know what you don’t know? Coaching is fantastic for challenging and encouraging coachees to think differently. When you think in a different way you learn something new.

Our brains don’t always like change; they are happy to stay in one place, stay in our own personal comfort zone. It takes an input from a coach to guide in a different direction so that the coachee can learn more. Coaching is an excellent place for this to happen, in fact, a perfect place for this to happen. A coach provides the space for the awareness in a coachee to grow and for this to happen.

A coach has to park their outside life and judgements to one side, to be in the room to listen to the coachee. We as human beings are entirely ignorant with our views on life, a lot of this is because “we don’t know what we don’t know” Our opinions, bias and judgements are based on our world, which is very small in comparison to the broader world.

I enjoy watching the light switch in a coachee when a small comment from myself can suddenly create a shift in the way that the coachee thinks. Remember the brain will fight change because it is comfortable with its own established habits. We build our habits throughout our lives’ and it takes a lot of work to create new patterns and habits, the brain will always fall back on what it knows.

Coaching is perfect for realising what you don’t know, it creates creativity and helps you think about areas in a completely different way.

Claire Moody is our head coach at Target Training and you can read more about her here.  She delivers training on coaching for managers courses, and you can read more about these courses here and see dates here.