【中文版在后面】
Self-Coaching to Create Value for Others
When I coach others, I often lead with the question, “What do you want?” If you don't know what you want, others will likely define your goals for you—and not always in your favor. Knowing what you want is not easy or fixed. Determining your wants requires relentless reflection on your values, skills, passions, and opportunities. But once defined, your wants becomes the “certainty” in a world of uncertainty and provides the personal courage to take risks and innovate.
Self-Coaching Learning and Tips
From this personal experience, let me suggest five tips to help business and HR leaders practice self-coaching.
1. Continually ask what you want.
The primary self-coaching question, “What do I want? ” is not a one-time or single situation query. Sometimes the answer to this question reflects long-term and timeless values, aspirations, and identity. At other times, answers are timely depending on the situation. My desire for my presentation was based on my value of creating value for others; the specific action was adapting my remarks to create value for participants.
2. Think of the impact of what you want may have on what others may want.
Your wants based on your values have more impact when they create value for others. As you self-coach and clarify your wants, think about how those wants may be perceived by others and how your actions to achieve them will affect others. Unless your wants add value to others, they remain narcissistic self-interests and will likely fade. By linking your wants to others’ values, your actions are reinforced and sustained. In my case, I wanted participants to leave the summit with insights and actions that would help them be more effective. Thinking about what participants might be experiencing from the day-long workshop help me adjust my final comments accordingly.
3. Be prepared with expansive thinking.
Probing what you want requires the ability to adapt to the answer. Sometimes, leaders play management jeopardy. They start with an answer, then they try to discover the right question. This answer-first logic limits options. Self-coaching through preparation requires having an array of options that might be pursued depending on what is wanted. A range of options comes from having broad experience and expertise to be able to respond to what you want. To adapt my presentation, I drew on many other experiences when I had given presentations where some worked and some did not. I could quickly reflect on what might work best in this particular situation, and I had the courage to adapt and move forward instead of giving my pre-prepared class.
4. Simplify without being simplistic.
Sometimes we have so many personal and other wants that being simple and focused is difficult. Filtering requires prioritizing by focusing attention on wants and actions that will have the most impact and will most likely be accomplished. Asking the essentialist question, “What is the most important thing that I can do now to make progress?” helps simplify and prioritize. I wanted to create a simple and impactful message for my master class, so I focused on five memorable concepts that participants could use to prioritize actions from their experiences of day-long session. My five concepts and reflection questions gave participants a simple diagnostic to prioritize what mattered most to each of them (personalization being the last idea and question).
5. Risk, act, learn, and risk some more.
Knowing what you want and its impact on others, as well as being prepared with simple solutions, enables you to take a risk, act, learn, and risk again. Successfully changing for good is seldom linear (point A to point B), and self-coaching progress more likely occurs with willingness to take a risk, to act quickly, succeed or fail (or a combination of both), to learn from what works and does not, and to risk again. In my case, the opportunity to have an impact far outweighed the risk of a poor presentation, so I acted, learned from my experience, and will risk again in the future.
Self-Coaching is an On-Going Process
Coaches help other people make progress. Self-coaching enables oneself to progress, springboarding from knowing what you want and then making it happen.
How do you self-coach?
【中文版】
自我指导为他人创造价值
当我指导别人时，我经常以这样的问题作为开场白:“你想要什么?”如果你不知道自己想要什么，别人可能会为你定义你的目标——而且并不总是对你有利。知道自己想要什么既不容易也不固定。确定自己的需求需要不断反思自己的价值观、技能、激情和机会。但一旦被定义，你的需求就会成为不确定世界中的“确定性”，并提供承担风险和创新的个人勇气。
自我辅导学习和技巧
根据我的个人经验，让我提出五个建议来帮助企业和人力资源领导者进行自我指导。
1. 不断地问自己想要什么。
自我辅导的主要问题是:“我想要什么?”不是一次性或单一情况查询。有时，这个问题的答案反映了长期和永恒的价值观、愿望和身份。在其他时候，根据情况，答案是及时的。我对演讲的渴望是基于我为他人创造价值的价值观;具体行动是改编我的发言，为与会者创造价值。
2. 想想你想要的东西可能对别人想要的东西产生的影响。
当你基于你的价值观的需求为他人创造价值时，它们会产生更大的影响。当你自我指导和澄清你的需求时，想想别人会如何看待这些需求，以及你实现这些需求的行动会如何影响别人。除非你的欲望能给他人带来价值，否则它们仍然是自恋的自我利益，很可能会消失。通过将你的愿望与他人的价值观联系起来，你的行动会得到加强和持续。就我个人而言，我希望与会者在离开峰会时能带着能帮助他们提高效率的见解和行动。考虑到参与者在为期一天的研讨会中可能会经历什么，这有助于我相应地调整我的最后评论。
3. 准备好开阔的思维。
探究你想要什么需要适应答案的能力。有时候，领导者会在管理上冒险。他们从一个答案开始，然后试图发现正确的问题。这种回答优先的逻辑限制了选择。通过准备进行自我指导需要有一系列的选择，这些选择可能取决于你想要什么。一系列的选择来自于拥有广泛的经验和专业知识，能够对你想要的做出反应。为了适应我的演讲，我借鉴了许多其他的经验，当我做演讲时，有些成功了，有些没有。我可以很快地思考在这种特殊情况下什么可能是最好的，我有勇气去适应和前进，而不是上我预先准备好的课。
4. 简化而不过分简单化。
有时候，我们有太多的个人需求和其他需求，以至于很难做到简单和专注。过滤需要将注意力集中在影响最大、最有可能完成的需求和行动上，从而确定优先级。问一个本质主义的问题，“我现在能做的最重要的事情是什么?”，有助于简化工作，分清轻重缓急。我想为我的大师班创造一个简单而有影响力的信息，所以我专注于五个令人难忘的概念，参与者可以根据他们一整天的课程经验来确定行动的优先顺序。我的五个概念和反思问题给了参与者一个简单的诊断，以优先考虑对他们每个人最重要的事情(个性化是最后一个想法和问题)。
5. 冒险，行动，学习，再冒险。
知道你想要什么以及它对他人的影响，以及准备简单的解决方案，使你能够承担风险，行动，学习，再冒险。成功的永久改变很少是线性的(从A点到B点)，自我指导的进步更有可能发生在愿意冒险、迅速行动、成功或失败(或两者兼而有之)、从有效和无效的经验中学习以及再次冒险的过程中。在我的例子中，产生影响的机会远远超过了糟糕的演示文稿的风险，所以我采取了行动，从我的经验中吸取了教训，并将在未来再次冒险。
自我指导是一个持续的过程
教练帮助别人取得进步。自我指导能让自己进步，从知道自己想要什么开始，然后让它实现。
你是如何自我训练的?
