| COOL FRIENDS |
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| Mihaela Paduraru, Coach, Metasysteme |
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1) Mihaela, you've worked in diferent management positions for 11 years, the last 4 you've spent as GM, and then you made an important change by becoming a coach. What were the reasons behind your decision of trading the corporate environment for coaching?
Let's say it was "love at first sight"! I followed my passions during every step of my life and with coaching it was absolutely the same. Being a General Manager was a wonderful period in which I achieved many great results with my teams. I want to share that experience with more than one team, with more than one company. When I first heard of coaching, it came to me very naturally and I knew this was the next thing I wanted to do: become a coach. I am very excited about the idea of helping people and teams, making them reach the results they truly want to obtain. I'm convinced that results bring the satisfaction we are all looking for.
2) What do a coach and a manager have in common and what is different ? Do you think there are certain traits that managers should learn from coaches and vice versa in order to become better at what they do ?
Being a coach and being a manager are two complete different professions. And as a metaphor, I am thinking of a football team. There is a captain of the team and there is the coach of the team. The captain is getting results by managing his team, giving instructions, correcting mistakes, establishing new positions and driving his team to immediate "goals" during the game. The coach is always outside the playing-field. The coach never plays in any game. He is only getting the best out of each player by breaking through the player's own paradigms. The same at a team level: the coach makes a team collaborate in such a way that synergies are created and the team obtains incredible results together. But all this happens outside the real games and outside the playing-field (the board-room). The coach is neither a leader, nor a manager, the coach is a facilitator of result-driven processes.
3) What kind of people are best suited for this environment (coaching) ? Are there certain charactheristics that a person should have if he decides to become a coach ?
I know people in the coaching field from very different backgrounds; I know psychologists, consultants, trainers, and, if you take my example, managers. If we think of coaches as "paradigm-breakers", I believe that any background is a good one. I believe that a certain client attracts a certain coach and the other way around. It has to be a match. From this perspective, each coach, whatever his background, has his client. It doesn't mean that every coach has enough business though! In Romania, I see that many coaches have a psychology background.
For the other question, I believe first of all that a real coach has to be himself. But this is valid for the majority of jobs. If I refer to the specific skills a person needs to master in order to be a coach, I believe that there are many abilities, the majority of which need to be learned. I'm thinking of skills like: listening, being a good observer in order to discover patterns, a deeply embedded respect for the client, being able to support the dialog of the client, and of course being able to accompany the client to reach his goal.
4) What is the level of development of coaching in Romania? What are the perspectives for this market considering the difficult period we are going through?
The coaching market in Romania is developing and still has a long way to go. The difficult situation we are in at the moment is a brilliant opportunity for the growth of coaching as a profession. This is the time in which we can all show our true added value. We see that our clients (both individuals and companies) are re-thinking their values and strategies and clarifying new directions and new goals. Like Alain said in one of his articles "it's a time of adjustments". That is always a good period for coaching. I see, among my clients, that there are companies that need to change something, anything, because it is becoming very obvious that old strategies and old ways of working are no longer bringing results. So, they have to look for new solutions, new directions and new, original ways of organizing and developing their businesses. The need for coaching is very real and true nowadays.
5) In one of his articles Alain Cardon said, with regard to coaching, that "it is not the approach of an expert[...but] it offers an alternative to fragmented expertise". How much will this idea matter, the fact that you aren't an expert in a certain field, for someone who is thinking of getting a coach? What should this person expect?
Someone who calls in a coach has to be prepared to be challenged, whether it's the way he works, his behaviors and even his whole environment, but - most important - he must be truly committed to achieve results, which mostly means an important change. If there is no true commitment to change, coaching is just a cost and not an investment that pays itself many times back.
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Human Invest is a Premier League company in the arena of training and organizational development consultancy services, present on the Romanian market since 1998.
We are recognized for conceiving and implementing programs which offer managers an authentic experience towards improving their leadership performances, and thus we support companies in becoming more and more engaged in delivering excellent services for their clients.
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