COMMUNICATION
Communication is vital for a successful coaching/mentoring relationship. You need to be willing and able to communicate openly and honestly with your coach from the start to get the most out of your session.
A good coaching/mentoring relationship is based on trust and rapport regardless of whether your training session is online or face to face. Our virtual team all have exceptional coaching/mentoring skills, but if the trust isn’t there and communication channels aren’t open you will never get as much as you could from the experience.
It’s also important to communicate what a successful coaching/mentoring outcome would look like to you. Do this early and you can both refer back to this and assess progress throughout the relationship.
COME PREPARED
The more you bring to each session and the more engaged you are with the process the more you will get out of the experience. So come prepared with your goals, your concerns and what you hope to learn.
Unlike a group training session, coaching is, by its nature, individually tailored to your specific training and development needs. So, if one of your goals is to improve your ability to communicate difficult information to staff/employees/colleagues let your coach/mentor know so you can work on that and be ready to talk about examples.
BE OPEN TO NEW IDEAS
Coaching/Mentoring is all about accessing your innate abilities and taking you from good to exceptional. That process will almost certainly take you out of your comfort zone to some degree, although with the support and dedication of the right coach/mentor and an openness to new ideas you’ll find your comfort zone rapidly expanding.
PROTECT THE TIME
When meetings are not face-to-face it can be much easier for other things to get in the way. You might block out the time in your diary but if you are in your business phone calls, emails and even people entering can all interrupt your training session.
To get the most out of every session, find a way to make sure you are not disturbed. Let colleagues know you are in a meeting, turn off notifications and perhaps even take yourself somewhere else.
It’s also important that you show up wanting to get as much as possible out of each session as you can. Coaching/Mentoring only works if you are coachable and that is as much about mindset as anything else.
