Coaching And Mentoring Assignment: A Reflective Report On Activity-Based Experience
Question
Task:
Coaching And Mentoring Assignment Description
In weeks 8-10, you will be presented with a scenario and will have the opportunity to take the role of a mentor, coach, observer or employee through in-class or online discussion/ role plays. In week 12, you will be exposed to content to do with the role of coaching in organisations.
To strengthen your understanding of these experiences, you will be required to write a reflection of the experience of your role as mentor, coach, observer or employee of around 650 words. Over each week you will be able to use your experience to assemble three of these reflections as you engage in the week’s exercises, bringing your work to a total for this task of 2000 words.
In writing up your experience of these coaching and mentoring experiences you should reflect on:
- What happened in the interaction, including what aspects went well and what needed improvement,
- How relevant theoretical reading or research you have done applies to the situation,
- What you learned or gained from the experience, and
- Practical actions you could take to improve your approach in the future based on your reading, reflection, experience and observation.
Answer
The report on coaching and mentoring assignment aims to discuss reflections on the activity-based experience through workshops and classroom activities completed in weeks 8, 9, and 10.
Reflections related to Mentoring Experience
The workshop objectives were to understand the role of mentoring and the elements that contribute to the successful implementation and execution of the mentoring programs within the organization. The activity involved thinking and writing about the people that have helped me in my life. The activity required us to share our thoughts on what that person did and how it was special to our life.
In this view, I would like to discuss that since I am not an established professional yet, my parents and teachers have been the mentors of my life. I can recall university life when I was failing to maintain a balance between my studies, co-curriculum activities, and my family life. It was my mom who acted as a mentor and guided me about managing life. She used to observe me every day that I had become rude and I used to late each day. She sat with me and made me understand that every second of an individual life is important hence to grasp each moment, we need to prioritize our work and manage time. She mentored me about the importance of time management and how I could balance everything if I paid little attention to my routine life. I was still confused about managing so many things as scenarios were moving very fast in my life. She helped me in forming routines and prepare small milestones for each problem faced and this is how I manage every small issue of my life. Most importantly parents taught me the importance and how to prioritize my work for balancing each day that comes forth. I further realized their teachings were prevalent in personal and professional for maintaining sound health and productivity.
In this view mentoring is a type of relationship amongst high experienced and less experienced persons in which the purpose is meeting professional and personal growth (Lofthouse&Thomas2014, p. 202). The origins of the mentorship concepts arisen from the apprenticeship through which the experiences are passed on to the less experienced persons. I could relate this concept to the teachings of my mentors over time (Srivastava2015, p. 428). In this view, week 8 learning also taught about the organizational mentoring that is applying the strategic approach for developing skills of the employees (mentee) with an experienced one. Thus, the mentoring programs in the organization help align the employees with the organizational objectives which further improves organizational performance. I realized that experienced individuals like parents or teachers guide us at every point of life through advice and scolding. Thus, the primary aim of mentoring is to build capabilities and self-reliance in the mentee. The theory suggests that mentors re capable of highlighting issues thereby assisting the mentee in undertaking planning for passing their ways. Similarly, my real-time mentors had provided me advice or showed me directions when my issues were urgent and straightforward. However, in the professional environment, a successful partnership can only de defined if both the partners follow aspects of trust, understanding, and confidentiality. My experience helps to grasp insights about the tools that could be formally used in workplace scenarios. In the personal fronts, the situations cannot be anticipated and change every time, hence advice or guidance from experienced and elderly individuals helps in obtaining positive vibes from challenging situations. Similarly, in the workplace settings that mentoring is considers as one of the powerful tools in developing leadership skills within the organizations (Lofthouse&Thomas2014, p.203). We were given tasks during the weeks, one of the interesting ones was listing reasons for organizations that fail mentoring programs. In a group of four, we researched and found that issues like implementation, design, program management, and others hindered successful mentorship in the firms. Thereby it is also important to match the mentors and mentees for the mentoring programs thus the mentoring cycles and styles would be helpful in real-time organizations. My experiences during the week were great and helped me in gaining practical insights about mentoring, I would like to learn more about these programs for applying it professional and personal life.
Reflection related to Coaching Experience
In week 9, the workshop objectives were to understanding the GROW model of coaching while in week 10, the major aim was to understand the concepts regarding goals. We were taught that the GROW model is one of the efficient tools that can be used for coaching strategies. The GROW model can be expanded as Goal, Reality, Options and Will in which Goal refers to what we want, reality refers where are we now?, Options relates to what could we do, and will consider what will we do?.(Cox&Jackson2014, p. 215). The workshops were interesting as we were scattered into groups of three thus picking one coach, coachee, and observer. We switched the roles of each member after every turn so that each member could get the chance of speaking their GROW strategies. In around, I was the coachee hence my Goal was to obtaining professional competencies and learning business management software. In the Reality aspect that is R, I am in the infancy stage as I have little knowledge about professional skills. Furthermore, options relate to strategies that will be helpful, thus I could enroll myself in courses for learning businessanalysis while I could also enhance my professional competencies while also applying for internships in different commercial houses. In the will aspect, I would like to turn my options into reality which will help me in a professional environmentin the future. The week study was true as the model robotically worked in for guiding us what we want to we achieve in our life.
Diagnosing issues are major concerns that hinder our path of success in which coaching conversations are quire helpful. However, being a coach is not easy as it requires skills and competencies that include planning, questioning, goal setting, active listening, and many others. The GROW model is a helpful tool in personal and professional life also the experience was enriching as we could relate theories in real-time (Othman&Yee2014, p. 99). In the future, I will try other models as well for improving personal and professional competencies.
In week 10, we were taught about goals that play a significant role in improving performance. It is said that, that each individual has poorly defined goals thus the role of the coach is to help their clients in setting goals and achieving the same.In this view, Goals are linked to psychology that includes personalities, motivation, attitudes, and values. Thus, the goals should be measurable and concrete so that an individual will be able to observe their progress. We were taught about SMART goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time- Framed. In this view, were divided into two groups with the role of coach and coachee defining three goals, using the coaching skills and questioning techniques. In another activity, we were divided into groups of three for consolidating the knowledge of coaching.
In the first activity, My three SMART goals were learning time management skills, learning to analyze the business reports, and operational data while also learning different software that was used by the majority of the organizations. The second activity was very interesting as each one of us would take the role of coach and coach a person on their skill. I solved the issues of my teammate who discussed that he has been experiencing low morale due to which interest in doing his favorite talks and college assignments have lowered. So, I and my mate discussed the major root cause and this issue started from and collaboratively we were able to find a solution. I was facing issues in managing time on which I was coached to divide my work into smaller parts and then complete it. In the same week, we were also learned that psychometrics and coaching are interrelated which includes Cognitive abilities, personality, and emotional intelligence (Othman&Yee2014, p.99).
In this view, theoretical aspects of goals are relevant for the real world and it boosts up our Morales and solves many of the issues. In the future, I will actively participate in this experiment and also implement it in my personal life for improvements.
Reflection Related to the Application of Coaching in the Workplace
This week, the workshop objectives were to understand the role of coaching in an organizational context. It helped us in identifying the manager's role as coach, coaching culture along with their benefits and disadvantages. In recent times, organizations have been undertaking several strategies for creating a competitive advantage for other firms operating in the same industry. in this view, the companies often change their processes that require motivation and high productivity from the employee base (Dobrea&Maiorescu2015, p. 250). Organizations are often keen to find ways for learning, adapting, and demonstrating the right behaviors of the worker base (Jones et al, 2016, p. 250). In this view, Workplace coaching has been one of the most important aspects of ensuring high performance from the workplace. Coaching is referred to as adaptationand learning of new skills and competencies in workplace settings. By incorporating coaching strategies in the workplace, the organization aims in developing the competencies, effectiveness that further helps in improvising the overall firm performance (Passmore2014, p. 93). In some scenarios, the senior managers often take the roles of coach for guiding the employees however, some firms might undertake external help for improving workforce performance and morale.
In this view, we were divided into groups of 3- 4 and asked to give a solution to the given case with the help of the coaching continuum. The role of the teacher, mentor, and manager is part of the extrinsic solution while factors like counselling, therapy, and meditation focus on the intrinsic solution. It can be said that Joe Bloggs (case activity) will be able to improve by focusing on his performance andreceiving guidance on what will be best for him (that is to say extrinsic solution. Through the intrinsic solution (therapists, counsellors, and meditators), Bloggs will release potentials and find solutions on his own. This approach of theory with activity was beneficial for each one of us as it gave us a real-life example to understand. In the coaching continuum model,workplace coaching takes the central position as it considers both the performance and potential aspects. This activity was designed well as we could easily relate it to the theory.
Workplace coaching has several benefits that include cost & time efficacy, flexibility, personal development, enhanced productivity, self-reliance, and others while the disadvantages relate to in capabilities of the coach, goals alignment, confidentiality, and others. It is observed that approximately 47% of the managers utilize coaching style (Grant&Hartley2013, p.102). Thus, the role of the manager should be to conduct a coaching conversation for encouraging the employees to form their thoughts and become self- directed. About this concept, we were again divided into groups of 7 for arguing on the important factors related to coaching relationships (Ladyshewsky&Pettapiece2015, p.1). After the arguments, we concluded that mutual trust, understanding, insights about emotional intelligence, mental make-upare some of the important factors that help in building strong relationships amongst coach and coachee. In another activity, we were required to rate ourselves on a 1- 10 scale against the features of the manager as a coach and make a line according to the low o high mindset coach. It was an interesting task as we not only rated ourselves but could compare our mindsets of a coach with other teammates. I rated myself 52 as aspects like openness in receiving feedback and high standard are low in me. Both the activities listed above were interesting and I could relate myself to it also I couldnot understand some of the video activities of the week. I would like more such activities in the future so that each of our business concepts is cleared and we can easily apply them to a professional career.
The week’s study from 8- 12 was discussed in this reflection report. The theoreticalexplanation followed by classroom activities helped in clarifying our concepts of this course.
Reference List
Cox, E& Jackson, P 2014, Developmental coaching, The complete handbook of coaching, pp.215-227.
Dobrea, M&Maiorescu, I2015, Entrepreneurial outcomes and organisational performance through business coaching, Amfiteatru Economic Journal, vol. 17, no. 38, pp.247-260.
Grant, A &Hartley, M 2013, Developing the leader as coach: insights, strategies, and tips for embedding coaching skills in the workplace, Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research, and Practice, vol. 6, no. 2, pp.102-115.
Jones, RJ, Woods, SA & Guillaume, YR 2016, The effectiveness of workplace coaching: A meta?analysis of learning and performance outcomes from coaching, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, vol. 89, no. 2, pp.249-277.
Ladyshewsky, R & Pettapiece, R 2015, Exploring adult learners usage of information communication technology during a virtual peer coaching experience, The Official Journal of the Online Learning Consortium, vol. 19, no. 2, pp.1-15.
Lofthouse, R &Thomas, U2014, Mentoring student teachers; a vulnerable workplace learning practice, Coaching and mentoring assignment International Journal of mentoring and coaching in education, vol. 3, no. 3. pp. 201-218
Othman, N&Yee, S 2014, Coaching in action research. Journal of Empirical Studies,vol.1, no.3, pp.98-104.
Passmore, J 2014, Behavioural coaching, In Handbook of coaching psychology (pp. 93-105). Routledge.
Srivastava, SB 2015, Network intervention: Assessing the effects of formal mentoring on workplace networks, Social Forces, vol. 94, no.1, pp.427-452.
