news article
Maximize your potential with the help of a coach
September 22, 2015 / By the Rev. Helen Beck
Are you beginning a new ministry? Are you seeking to maximize your gifts? Do you sometimes lose resolve or focus when pursuing a goal? Can you see where you want to be, and are you unsure about how to get there?
A coach can help.
Coaching is the art of partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential, according to the International Coaching Federation (ICF).
Coaching is for any leader in ministry regardless of if they are lay or clergy.
Through a process that includes deep listening and powerful questions, a coach journeys alongside the client – an individual or a team – to provide a supportive atmosphere where new possibilities can be created, expanded, and explored; where the client’s resources and spiritual gifts can be affirmed and engaged; and where the client claims and commits to an action plan.
According to “What is Coaching All About,”
Through the coaching process, the clarity that is needed to support the most effective actions is achieved. Coaching accelerates progress by providing greater focus and awareness of possibilities leading to more effective choices. Coaching concentrates on where individuals are now and what they are willing to do to get where they want to be in the future. Results are a matter of the individual's or team’s intentions, choices, and actions, supported by the coach's application of coaching skills, approaches, and methods.
Coaching is similar to other helping professions, yet distinctly different. Each discipline brings something unique to the life of a person and can be useful to promote different aspects of personal and professional growth.
Coaching is not therapy, counseling, consulting, mentoring, training, or spiritual direction.
Since the purpose of coaching is to maximize one’s effectiveness in achieving goals, coaching stays in the present, builds on strengths, assumes competence, and taps into the client’s own experience, wisdom, and resolve to generate solutions and follow through on the client’s chosen action plan.
Coaching has long been utilized in the corporate world. In 2012, The United Methodist Church’s General Conference session recognized coaching as a valuable resource for clergy and laity.
Book of Discipline ¶ 349.4 added, “It is expected that all annual conferences will make available and encourage the use of spiritual guides, life coaches, pastoral counselors, or vocational mentors for all clergy, separate from the superintendent, and that clergy will utilize these kinds of support as a standard practice of ministry throughout the clergy career, and in all assignments and appointments.
In order to make coaching available in the Upper New York Conference, 37 coaches have been trained to date using curriculum approved by the ICF. If you would like more information on coaching – or would like to receive the support of a coach yourself – contact the Rev. Alan Howe, convener of the UNY Coaching Network Team, at aghowe@twcny.rr.com.
Rev. Helen Beck, pastor at Madrid UMC, is one of the newly trained UNY coaches.